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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 


PROF.   MALBONE  W.    GRAHAM 


SELECTIONS 


FROM   THE   PROSE   WRITINGS  OF 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


Edited  with 
Notes  and  an  Introduction 


BY 


LEWIS   E.  GATES 


w 

WW 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1897, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO. 


PREFACE. 


These  Selections  from  Arnold  are  meant  to  go  with 
the  Selections  from  Newman  already  included  in  Eng- 
lish  Readings.  Newman  and  Arnold  were  both  Oxford 
men  ;  both  were  devoted  believers  in  the  academic 
ideal;  both  discussed  and  dealt  practically  with  edu- 
cational problems,  and  yet  both  touched  life  in  many 
other  ways  and  are  remembered  as  men  of  letters  or 
leaders  of  thought,  rather  than  as  mere  academicians. 
Although  Arnold  never  imposed  himself  on  his  gener- 
ation as  did  Newman,  never  ruled  the  imaginations 
of  large  masses  of  men,  or  was  so  prevailing  and 
picturesque  a  figure  as  Newman,  yet  no  less  than  New- 
man he  represents  one  distinct  phase  of  nineteenth- 
century  academic  culture;  from  1855  to  1870  he  was 
probably  the  man  of  letters  whom  the  younger  genera- 
tion at  Oxford  most  nearly  accepted  as  their  natural 
spokesman. 

The  Selections  aim  to  present,  in  the  briefest  possible 
compass,  what  is  most  characteristic  in  Arnold's  criti- 
cism of  literature  and  life.  His  conception  of  the 
critic  was  as  the  guardian  of  culture,  as  called  upon 
to  pass  judgment  on  the  various  expressions  of  life, 
and  especially  upon  books  in  their  relation  to  life, 
and  to  determine  their  influence  on  the  temper  and 
ideals  of  the  public.     He  is  to  be  an  adept  in  life, 


691368 


iv  PREFACE. 

a  diviner  of  the  essentials  that  underlie  the  multi- 
form play  of  human  energy  ;  he  must  know  life  inti- 
mately; and  being  concerned  that  life  shall  have  its 
best  quality,  he  will  strive  for  this  perfection  not 
only  through  what  he  says  about  books,  but  also 
through  direct  comment  on  those  modes  of  living — 
those  ideals — which  his  analysis  and  imagination 
detect  as  ruling  his  contemporaries.  In  obedience 
to  this  conception  of  the  critic,  Arnold  had  much 
to  say  not  only  on  poetry  and  belles  lettres,  but  on 
politics,  religion,  theology,  and  the  general  social  con- 
ditions of  his  time.  The  Selections  include  one  or 
more  of  his  characteristic  comments  on  each  of  these 
topics. 

It  should  also  be  noted  that  many  of  the  Selections 
are  complete  essays  or  lectures,  not  mere  extracts. 
The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present  Time  is  an  en- 
tire essay;  On  Translating  Homer  is  the  entire  first 
lecture  on  this  subject;  Oxford  and  Philistinism  and 
Culture  and  Anarchy  are  entire  prefaces  or  introduc- 
tions; Compulsory  Education  and  "  Life  a  Dream  "  are 
entire  Letters;  Literature  and  Science  and  Emerson  are 
entire  Discourses — two  of  the  three  that  Arnold  gave 
repeatedly  in  America.  His  Discourses  in  America 
stood  specially  high  in  Arnold's  favor;  shortly  before 
his  death  he  spoke  of  the  book  as  that  "  by  which,  of 
all  his  prose-writings,  he  should  most  wish  to  be  re- 
membered." 

The  Selections  are  believed  also  to  present  Arnold's 
style  adequately  throughout  its  whole  range.  In  some 
respects  his  style,  despite  possible  faults  of  manner 
that  will  later  be  considered,  is  the  best  model  avail- 


PRE  FA  CE.  V 

able  for  students  of  prose.  It  is  not  so  idiosyncratic 
as  are  the  styles  of  Carlyle  or  Mr.  Ruskin,  not  so 
inimitably  individual;  it  is  more  conventional  and 
unimpassioned,  more  expressive  of  the  mood  of  prose, 
with  little  of  the  color  and  few  of  the  overtones  of 
poetry.  Yet  it  is  an  intensely  vital  style,  and  every- 
where exemplifies  not  simply  the  logic  of  good  writing, 
but  the  intimate  correspondence  of  phrase  with  thought 
and  mood  that  great  writers  of  prose  continually  secure. 
Individual  it  therefore  is,  and  yet  not  arbitrarily  or 
forbiddingly  individual.  Its  merits  and  possible  short- 
comings are  analyzed  at  length  in  the  Introduction. 

The  more  important  dates  in  Arnold's  life  and  a  list 
of  his  main  publications  are  given  just  after  the  Intro- 
duction. ■  A  brief  sketch  of  his  life  may  be  found  in 
Men  of  the  Time,  ed.  1887;  a  longer,  more  appreciative 
sketch,  in  Eminent  Persons,  or  Biographies  reprinted 
from  the  Times,  vol.  iv.  Mr.  Andrew  Lang's  article  on 
Arnold,  in  the  Century  for  April,  1882,  also  contains 
much  interesting  biographical  detail. 

Harvard  University,  Cambridge,  Mass., 
August,  1S97. 


CONTENTS. 


Introduction  : 

PAGB 

I. 

Arnold's  Manner, 

.              ix 

II. 

Criticism  of  Life, 

• 

.         .                 xiv 

III. 

Theory  of  Culture, 

.         .          xxii 

IV. 

Ethical  Bias, 

• 

xxxii 

V. 

Literary  Criticism, 

xliii 

VI. 

Appreciations, 

• 

li 

VII. 

Style, 

lix 

VIII. 

Relation  to  his  Times,    . 

• 

lxxvii 

Selections : * 

""The  Function  of  Criticism  (1865),         .... 

On  Translating  Homer  (1861),  .... 

Philology  and  Literature  (1862),  .... 

^The  Grand  Style  (1862) 

"^Style  in  Literature  (1866),  ..... 

pfature  in  English  Poetry  (1866),      .... 

Poetry  and  Science  (1S63) 102 

literature  and  Science  (1882),  ....  104 

*  The  date  assigned  each  Selection  is  that  of  its  earliest  appear- 
ance in  print. 


V11J 


CONTENTS. 


Uxford  and  Philistinism  (1865), 
Philistinism  (1863),  .         .         . 

vDulture  and  Anarchy  (1867), 
Sweetness  and  Light  (1867),  . 

Hebraism  and  Hellenism  (1868), 
N  The  Dangers  of  Puritanism  (1868), 
The  Not  Ourselves  (1871), 
Paris  and  the  Senses  (1873),     . 
The  Celt  and  the  Teuton  (1866), 
The  Modern  Englishman  (1866),     . 
Compulsory  Education  (1867),     . 
"  Life  a  Dream  "  (1870),  .         . 

America  (1869), 
xlmerson  (1884),     . 
Notes        ...  . 


PAGE 

.   132 

139 

.   144 

147 
.   l8l 

193 
.   204 

218 
.   224 

235 

.   242 

250 

.   258 

265 

.   295 


INTRODUCTION. 


Admirers  of  Arnold's  prose  find  it  well  to  admit 
frankly  that  his  style  has  an  unfortunate  knack  of 
exciting  prejudice.  Emerson  has  somewhere  spoken 
of  the  unkind  trick  fate  plays  a  man  when  it  gives  him 
a  strut  in  his  gait.  Here  and  there  in  Arnold's  prose, 
there  is  just  a  trace — sometimes  more  than  a  trace — of 
such  a  strut.  He  condescends  to  his  readers  with  a 
gracious  elaborateness  ;  he  is  at  great  pains  to  make 
them  feel  that  they  are  his  equals  ;  he  undervalues  him- 
self playfully  ;  he  assures  us  that  "  he  is  an  unlearned 
belletristic  trifler";1  he  insists  over  and  over  again 
that  "  he  is  an  unpretending  writer,  without  a  phil- 
osophy based  on  interdependent,  subordinate,  and 
coherent  principles."2  All  this  he  does,  of  course, 
smilingly  ;  but  the  smile  seems  to  many  on  whom  its 
favors  fall,  supercilious  ;  and  the  playful  undervalua- 
tion of  self  looks  shrewdly  like  an  affectation.  He  is 
very  debonair, — this  apologetic  writer ;  very  self-as- 
sured ;  at  times  even  jaunty.3 

Thorough-going  admirers  of   Arnold    have   always 

1  Celtic  Literature,  p.  21. 

2  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  152  ;  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  273. 

3  Various  critics  have  complained  of  Arnold's  tone  and  bearing. 
Mr.  Saintsbury,  for  example,  objects  to  his  "  mincing"  manner  j 
Professor  Jowett,  to  his  "  flippancy." 


x  INTRODUCTION. 

relished  this  strain  in  his  style  ;  they  have  enjoyed  its 
delicate  challenge,  the  nice  duplicity  of  its  innuendoes; 
they  have  found  its  insinuations  and  its  covert,  satirical 
humor  infinitely  entertaining  and  stimulating.  More- 
over, however  seriously  disposed  they  may  have  been, 
however  exacting  of  all  the  virtues  from  the  author  of 
their  choice,  they  have  been  able  to  reconcile  their 
enjoyment  of  Arnold  with  their  serious  inclinations, 
for  they  have  been  confident  that  these  tricks  of 
manner  implied  no  essential  or  radical  defect  in 
Arnold's  humanity,  no  lack  either  of  sincerity  or  of 
earnestness  or  of  broad  sympathy. 

Such  admirers  and  interpreters  of  Arnold  have 
been  amply  justified  of  their  confidence  since  the 
publication  in  1895  of  Arnold's  Letters.  The  Arnold 
of  these  letters  is  a  man  the  essential  integrity — whole- 
ness— of  whose  nature  is  incontestable.  His  sincerity, 
kindliness,  wide-ranging  sympathy  with  all  classes  of 
men,  are  unmistakably  expressed  on  every  page  of  his 
correspondence.  We  see  him  having  to  do  with 
people  widely  diverse  in  their  relations  to  him  ;  with 
those  close  of  kin,  with  chance  friends,  with  many 
men  of  business  or  officials,  with  a  wide  circle  of 
literary  acquaintances,  with  workingmen,  and  with 
foreign  savants.  In  all  of  his  intercourse  the  same 
sweet-tempered  frankness  and  the  same  readiness  of 
sympathy  are  manifest.  There  is  never  a  trace  of  the 
duplicity  or  the  treacherous  irony  that  are  to  be  found 
in  much  of  his  prose. 

Moreover,  the  record  that  these  Letters  contain  of 
close  application  to  uncongenial  tasks  must  have  been 
a  revelation  to  many  readers  who  have  had  to  rely 


INTRODUCTION.  XI 

upon  books  for  their  knowledge  of  literary  men. 
Popular  caricatures  of  Arnold  had  represented  him  as 
"a  high  priest  of  the  kid-glove  persuasion,"  as  an 
incorrigible  dilettante,  as  a  kind  of  literary  fop  idling 
his  time  away  over  poetry  and  recommending  the 
parmaceti  of  culture  as  the  sovereignest  thing  in 
nature  for  the  inward  bruises  of  the  spirit.  This  con- 
ception of  Arnold,  if  it  has  at  all  maintained  itself, 
certainly  cannot  survive  the  revelations  of  the  Letters. 
The  truth  is  beyond  cavil  that  he  was  one  of  the  most 
self-sacrificingly  laborious  men  of  his  time. 

For  a  long  period  of  years  Arnold  held  the  post  of 
inspector  of  schools.  Day  after  day,  and  week  after 
week,  he  gave  up  one  of  the  finest  of  minds,  one  of 
the  most  sensitive  of  temperaments,  one  of  the  most 
delicate  of  literary  organizations,  to  the  drudgery  of 
examining  in  its  minutest  details  the  work  of  the 
schools  in  such  elementary  subjects  as  mathematics 
and  grammar.  On  January  7,  1863,  he  writes  to  his 
mother,  "I  am  now  at  the  work  I  dislike  most 
in  the  world — looking  over  and  marking  examina- 
tion papers.  I  was  stopped  last  week  by  my  eyes, 
and  the  last  year  or  two  these  sixty  papers  a  day  of 
close  hand-writing  to  read  have,  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
much  tried  my  eyes  for  the  time."  '  Two  years  later 
he  laments  again:  "I  am  being  driven  furious  by 
seven  hundred  closely-written  grammar  papers,  which 
I  have  to  look  over."  '  During  these  years  he  was 
holding  the  Chair  of  Poetry  at  Oxford,  and  he  had 
long  since  established  his  reputation  as  one  of  the 

1  Letters,  i.  207.     5  Letters,  i.  285 


Xll  INTRODUCTION. 

foremost  of  the  younger  poets.  Yet  for  a  livelihood 
he  was  forced  still  to  endure — and  he  endured  them  till 
within  a  few  years  of  his  death  in  1888 — the  exactions 
of  this  wearing  and  exasperating  drudgery.  More- 
over, despite  occasional  outbursts  of  impatience,  he 
gave  himself  to  the  work  freely,  heartily,  and  effect- 
ively. He  was  sent  on  several  occasions  to  the  Con- 
tinent to  examine  and  report  on  foreign  school 
systems  ;  his  reports  on  German  and  French  educa- 
tion show  immense  diligence  of  investigation,  a 
thorough  grasp  of  detail,  and  patience  and  persistence 
in  the  acquisition  of  facts  that  in  and  for  themselves 
must  have  been  unattractive  and  unrewarding. 

The  record  of  this  severe  labor  is  to  be  found  in 
Arnold's  Letters,  and  it  must  dispose  once  for  all  of 
any  charge  that  he  was  a  mere  dilettante  and  coiner 
of  phrases.  Through  a  long  period  of  years  he 
was  working  diligently,  wearisomely,  in  minutely  prac- 
tical ways,  to  better  the  educational  system  of  Eng- 
land ;  he  was  persistently  striving  both  to  spread 
sounder  ideals  of  elementary  education  and  to  make 
more  effective  the  system  actually  in  vogue.  And 
thus,  unpretentiously  and  laboriously,  he  was  serv- 
ing the  cause  of  sweetness  and  light  as  well  as  through 
his  somewhat  debonair  contributions  to  literature. 

In  another  way  his  Letters  have  done  much  to 
reveal  the  innermost  core  of  Arnold's  nature,  and  so, 
ultimately,  to  explain  the  genesis  of  his  prose.  They 
place  it  beyond  a  doubt  that  in  all  he  wrote  Arnold 
had  an  underlying  purpose,  clearly  apprehended  and 
faithfully  pursued.  In  1867,  in  a  letter  to  his  mother, 
he  says  :    "  I   more  and  more  become  conscious  of 


INTRODUCTION.  Xlli 

having  something  to  do  and  of  a  resolution  to  do 
it.  .  .  Whether  one  lives  long  or  not,  to  be  less  and 
less  personal  in  one's  desires  and  workings  is  the  great 
matter."  '  In  a  letter  of  1863  he  had  already  written 
in  much  the  same  strain  :  "  However,  one  cannot 
change  English  ideas  as  much  as,  if  I  live,  I  hope  to 
change  them,  without  saying  imperturbably  what  one 
thinks,  and  making  a  good  many  people  uncomfort- 
able." And  in  a  letter  of  the  same  year  he  exclaims  : 
"It  is  very  animating  to  think  that  one  at  last  has  a 
chance  of  getting  at  the  English  public.  Such  a  pub- 
lic as  it  is,  and  such  a  work  as  one  wants  to  do  with 
it."  3  A  work  to  do  !  The  phrase  recalls  Cardinal 
Newman  and  the  well-known  anecdote  of  his  Sicilian 
illness,  when  through  all  the  days  of  greatest  danger 
he  insisted  that  he  should  get  well  because  he  had  a 
work  to  do  in  England.  Despite  Arnold's  difference 
in  temperament  from  Newman  and  the  widely  dis- 
similar task  he  proposed  to  himself,  he  was  no  less  in 
earnest  than  Newman,  and  no  less  convinced  of  the 
importance  of  his  task. 

The  occasional  supercilious  jauntiness  of  Arnold's 
style,  then,  need  not  trouble  even  the  most  consci- 
entious of  his  admirers.  To  many  of  his  readers  it  is 
in  itself,  as  has  been  already  suggested,  delightfully 
stimulating.  Others,  the  more  conscientious  folk  and 
perhaps  also  the  severer  judges  of  literary  quality,  are 
bound  to  find  it  artistically  a  blemish;  but  they  need 
not  at  any  rate  regard  it  as  implying  any  radical 
defect  in  Arnold's  humanity  or  as  the  result  of  cheap 

1  Letters,  i.  400.         J Letters,  i.  225.         3 Letters,  i.  233. 


xiv  IN  TROD  UC  TION. 

cynicism  or  of  inadequate  sympathy.  In  point  of  fact, 
the  true  account  of  the  matter  seems  rather  to  lie  in  the 
paradox  that  the  apparent  superciliousness  of  Arnold's 
style  comes  from  the  very  intensity  of  his  moral 
earnestness,  and  that  the  limitations  of  his  style  and 
method  are  largely  due  to  the  strenuousness  of  his 
moral  purpose. 

II. 

What,  then,  was  Arnold's  controlling  purpose  in 
his  prose  writing  ?  What  was  "  the  work  "  that  he 
"  wanted  to  do  with  the  English  public  "  ?  In  trying 
to  find  answers  to  these  questions  it  will  be  well  first 
to  have  recourse  to  stray  phrases  in  Arnold's  prose  ; 
these  phrases  will  give  incidental  glimpses,  from  differ- 
ent points  of  view,  of  his  central  ideal  ;  later,  their 
fragmentary  suggestions  may  be  brought  together  into 
something  like  a  comprehensive  formula. 

In  the  lectures  on  Celtic  Literature  Arnold  points 
out  in  closing  that  it  has  been  his  aim  to  lead  English- 
men to  "  reunite  themselves  with  their  better  mind  and 
with  the  world  through  science  "  ;  that  he  has  sought 
to  help  them  "conquer  the  hard  unintelligence,  which 
was  just  then  their  bane  ;  to  supple  and  reduce  it  by 
culture,  by  a  growth  in  the  variety,  fullness,  and  sweet- 
ness of  their  spiritual  life."  In  the  Preface  to  his  first 
volume  of  Essays  he  explains  that  he  is  trying  "  to  pull 
out  a  few  more  stops  in  that  powerful  but  at  present 
somewhat  narrow-toned  organ,  the  modern  English- 
man." In  Culture  and  Anarchy  he  assures  us  that 
his  object  is  to  convince  men  of  the  value  of  "  culture  "; 


introduction:  xv 

to  incite  them  to  the  pursuit  of  "perfection";  to  help 
"make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail."  And 
again  in  the  same  work  he  declares  that  he  is  striving 
to  intensify  throughout  England  "the  impulse  to  the 
development  of  the  whole  man,  to  connecting  and 
harmonizing  all  parts  of  him,  perfecting  all,  leaving 
none  to  take  their  chance." 

These  phrases  give,  often  with  capricious  pictur- 
esqueness,  hints  of  the  prevailing  intention  with  which 
Arnold  writes.  They  may  well  be  supplemented  by 
a  series  of  phrases  in  which,  in  similarly  picturesque 
fashion,  he  finds  fault  with  life  as  it  actually  exists  in 
England,  with  the  individual  Englishman  as  he 
encounters  him  from  day  to  day ;  these  phrases, 
through  their  critical  implications,  also  reveal  the  pur- 
pose that  is  always  present  in  Arnold's  mind,  when  he 
addresses  his  countrymen.  "Provinciality,"  Arnold 
points  out  as  a  widely  prevalent  and  injurious  charac- 
teristic of  English  literature ;  it  argues  a  lack  of 
centrality,  carelessness  of  ideal  excellence,  undue 
devotion  to  relatively  unimportant  matters.  Again, 
"arbitrariness,"  and  "eccentricity"  are  noticeable 
traits  both  of  English  literature  and  scholarship ; 
Arnold  finds  them  everywhere  deforming  Professor 
Newman's  interpretations  of  Homer,  and  he  further 
comments  on  them  as  in  varying  degrees  "  the  great 
defect  of  English  intellect — the  great  blemish  of 
English  literature."  In  religion  he  takes  special 
exception  to  the  "loss  of  totality"  that  results,  from 
sectarianism  ;  this  is  the  penalty,  Arnold  contends, 
that  the  Nonconformist  pays  for  his  hostility  to  the 
established  church  ;  in  his  pursuit  of  his  own  special 


xvi  INTRODUCTION. 

enthusiasm  the  Nonconformist  becomes,  like  Ephraim, 
"a  wild  ass  alone  by  himself." 

From  all  these  brief  quotations  this  much  at  least 
is  plain,  that  what  Arnold  is  continually  recommend- 
ing is  the  complete  development  of  the  human  type, 
and  that  what  he  is  condemning  is  departure  from 
some  finely  conceived  ideal  of  human  excellence — 
from  some  scheme  of  human  nature  in  which  all  its 
powers  have  full  and  harmonious  play.  The  various 
phrases  that  have  been  quoted,  alike  the  positive  and 
the  negative  ones,  imply  as  Arnold's  continual  pur- 
pose in  his  prose-writings  the  recommendation  of  this 
ideal  of  human  excellence  and  the  illustration  of  the 
evils  that  result  from  its  neglect.  The  significance 
and  the  scope  of  this  purpose  will  become  clearer, 
however,  if  we  consider  some  of  the  imperfect  ideals 
which  Arnold  finds  operative  in  place  of  this  absolute 
ideal,  and  note  their  misleading  and  depraving  effects. 

One  such  partial  ideal  is  the  worship  of  the 
excessively  practical  and  the  relentlessly  utilitarian 
as  the  only  things  in  life  worth  while.  England  is 
a  prevailingly  practical  nation,  and  our  age  is  a 
prevailingly  practical  age  ;  the  unregenerate  product 
of  this  nation  and  age  is  the  Philistine,  and  against 
the  Philistine  Arnold  never  wearies  of  inveighing. 
The  Philistine  is  the  swaggering  enemy  of  the  chil- 
dren of  light,  of  the  chosen  people,  of  those  who 
love  art  and  ideas  disinterestedly.  The  Philistine 
cares- solely  for  business,  for  developing  the  material 
resources  of  the  country,  for  starting  companies, 
building  bridges,  making  railways,  and  establishing 
plants.     The  machinery  of   life — its    material  organ- 


INTRODUCTION.  xvu 

ization — monopolizes  all  his  attention.  He  judges 
of  life  by  the  outside,  and  is  careless  of  the 
things  of  the  spirit.  The  Philistine  may,  of  course, 
be  religious  ;  but  his  religion  is  as  materialistic  as  his 
everyday  existence  ;  his  heaven  is  a  triumph  of  engi- 
neering skill  and  his  ideal  of  future  bliss  is,  in  Sydney 
Smith's  phrase,  to  eat  "pdte's  de  foie  gras  to  the  sound 
of  trumpets."  Against  men  of  this  class  Arnold  can- 
not show  himself  too  cynically  severe  ;  they  are  piti- 
ful distortions  ;  the  practical  instincts  have  usurped, 
and  have  destroyed  the  symmetry  and  integrity  of  the 
human  type.  The  senses  and  the  will  to  live  are  mo- 
nopolizing and  determine  all  the  man's  energy  toward 
utilitarian  ends.  The  power  of  beauty,  the  power  of 
intellect  and  knowledge,  the  power  of  social  manners 
are  atrophied.  Society  is  in  serious  danger  unless 
men  of  this  class  can  be  touched  with  a  sense  of  their 
shortcomings  ;  made  aware  of  the  larger  values  of 
life  ;  made  pervious  to  ideas  ;  brought  to  recognize 
the  importance  of  the  things  of  the  mind  and  the 
spirit. 

Another  partial  ideal,  the  prevalence  of  which  Arnold 
laments,  is  the  narrowly  and  unintelligently  religious 
ideal.  The  middle  class  Englishman  is  according  to 
Arnold  a  natural  Hebraist;  he  is  pre-occupied  with 
matters  of  conduct  and  careless  about  things  of  the 
mind;  he  is  negligent  of  beauty  and  abstract  truth,  of 
all  those  interests  in  life  which  had  for  the  Greek  of 
old,  and  still  have  for  the  modern  man  of  "  Hellen- 
istic "  temper,  such  inalienable  charm.  The  Puritan- 
ism of  the  seventeenth  century  was  the  almost 
unrestricted  expression  of  the  Hebraistic  temper,  and 


xvm  INTRODUCTION. 

from  the  conceptions  of  life  that  were  then  wrought 
out,  the  middle  classes  in  England  have  never  wholly 
escaped.  The  Puritans  looked  out  upon  life  with  a 
narrow  vision,  recognized  only  a  few  of  its  varied  in- 
terests, and  provided  for  the  needs  of  only  a  part  of 
man's  nature.  Yet  their  theories  and  conceptions  of 
life — theories  and  conceptions  that  were  limited  in  the 
first  place  by  the  age  in  which  they  originated,  and  in 
the  second  place  by  a  Hebraistic  lack  of  sensitiveness 
to  the  manifold  charm  of  beauty  and  knowledge — 
these  limited  theories  and  conceptions  have  imposed 
themselves  constrainingly  on  many  generations  of 
Englishmen.  To-day  they  remain,  in  all  their  nar- 
rowness and  with  an  ever  increasing  disproportion  to 
existing  conditions,  the  most  influential  guiding  prin- 
ciples of  large  masses  of  men.  Such  men  spend  their 
lives  in  a  round  of  petty  religious  meetings  and  em- 
ployments. They  think  all  truth  is  summed  up  in 
their  little  cut  and  dried  Biblical  interpretations. 
New  truth  is  uninteresting  or  dangerous.  Art  dis- 
tracts from  religion,  and  is  a  siren  against  whose 
seductive  chanting  the  discreet  religious  Ulysses  seals 
his  ears.  To  Arnold  this  whole  view  of  life  seems 
sadly  mistaken,  and  the  men  who  hold  it  seem  fan- 
tastic distortions  of  the  authentic  human  type.  The 
absurdities  and  the  dangers  of  the  unrestricted  Hebra- 
istic ideal  he  satirizes  or  laments  in  Culture  and 
Anarchy,  in  Literature  and  Dogma,  in  God  and  the 
Bible,  and  in  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism. 

Still  another  kind  of  deformity  arises  when  the  in- 
tellect grows  self-assertive  and  develops  overween- 
ingly.     To  this  kind  of  distortion  the  modern  man  ui 


INTRODUCTION.  XIX 

science  is  specially  prone ;  his  exclusive  study  of 
material  facts  leads  to  crude,  unregenerate  strength 
of  intellect,  and  leaves  him  careless  of  the  value  truth 
may  have  for  the  spirit,  and  of  its  glimmering  sugges- 
tions of  beauty.  Yes,  and  for  the  philosopher  and  the 
scholar,  too,  over-intellectualism  has  its  peculiar  dan- 
gers. The  devotee  of  a  system  of  thought  is  apt  to 
lose  touch  with  the  real  values  of  life,  and  in  his  exor- 
bitant desire  for  unity  and  thoroughness  of  organiza- 
tion, to  miss  the  free  play  of  vital  forces  that  gives 
to  life  its  manifold  charm,  its  infinite  variety,  and 
its  ultimate  reality.  Bentham  and  Comte  are  ex- 
amples of  the  evil  effects  of  this  rabid  pursuit  of 
system.  :i  Culture  is  always  assigning  to  system- 
makers  and  systems  a  smaller  share  in  the  bent  of 
human  destiny  than  their  friends  like."  '  As  for  the 
pedant  he  is  merely  the  miser  of  facts,  who  grows 
withered  in  hoarding  the  vain  fragments  of  precious 
ore  of  whose  use  he  has  lost  the  sense.  Men  of  all 
these  various  types  offend  through  their  fanatical 
devotion  to  truth  ;  for,  indeed,  as  someone  has  in 
recent  years  well  said,  the  intellect  is  "  but  a  parvenu" 
and  the  other  powers  of  life,  despite  the  Napoleonic 
irresistibleness  of  the  newcomer,  have  rights  that  de- 
serve respect.  Over-intellectualism,  then,  like  the 
over-development  of  any  other  power,  leads  to  dis- 
proportion and  disorder. 

Such  being  some  of  the  partial  ideals  against  which 
Arnold  warns  his  readers,  what  account  does  he  give 
of  that  perfect  human  type  in  all  its  integrity,  in  terms 

1  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  33. 


XX  INTRODUCTION. 

of  which  he  criticises  these  aberrations  or  deformities  ? 
To  attempt  an  exact  definition  of  this  type  would 
perhaps  be  a  bit  presumptuous  and  grotesque,  and, 
with  his  usual  sureness  of  taste,  Arnold  has  avoided 
the  experiment.  But  in  many  passages  he  has  recorded 
clearly  enough  his  notion  of  the  powers  in  man  that 
are  essential  to  his  humanity,  and  that  must  all  be  duly 
recognized  and  developed,  if  man  is  to  attain  in  its 
full  scope  what  nature  offers  him.  A  representative 
passage  may  be  quoted  from  the  lecture  on  Literature 
and  Science  :  "When  we  set  ourselves  to  enumerate 
the  powers  which  go  to  the  building  up  of  human  life, 
and  say  that  they  are  the  power  of  conduct,  the  power 
of  intellect  and  knowledge,  the  power  of  beauty,  and 
the  power  of  social  life  and  manners,  he  [Professor 
Huxley]  can  hardly  deny  that  this  scheme,  though 
drawn  in  rough  and  plain  lines  enough,  and  not  pre- 
tending to  scientific  exactness,  does  yet  give  a  fairly 
true  representation  of  the  matter.  Human  nature  is 
built  up  of  these  powers  ;  we  have  the  need  for  them 
all.  When  we  have  rightly  met  and  adjusted  the 
claims  for  them  all,  we  shall  then  be  in  a  fair  way  for 
getting  soberness  and  righteousness  with  wisdom."  ' 

These  same  ideas  are  presented  under  a  somewhat 
different  aspect  and  with  somewhat  different  termi- 
nology in  the  first  chapter  of  Culture  and  Anarchy  : 
"  The  great  aim  of  culture  [is]  the  aim  of  setting  our- 
selves to  ascertain  what  perfection  is  and  to  make  it 
prevail."  Culture  seeks  "  the  determination  of  this 
question  through  all  the  voices  of  human  experience 

1  Selections,  p.  116. 


INTRODUCTION.  XXI 

which  have  been  heard  upon  it, — of  art,  science,  poetry 
philosophy,  history,  as  well  as  of  religion, — in  order  to 
give  a  greater  fullness  and  certainty  to  its  solution.  .  . 
Religion  says:  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you  j 
and  culture,  in  like  manner,  places  human  perfection 
in  an  internal  condition,  in  the  growth  and  predomi- 
nance of  our  humanity  proper,  as  distinguished  from 
our  animality.  It  places  it  in  the  ever-increasing 
efficacy  and  in  the  general  harmonious  expansion  of 
those  gifts  of  thought  and  feeling  which  make  the 
peculiar  dignity,  wealth,  and  happiness  of  human  na- 
ture. As  I  have  said  on  a  former  occasion  :  '  It  is  in 
making  endless  additions  to  itself,  in  the  endless  ex- 
pansion of  its  powers,  in  endless  growth  in  wisdom 
and  beauty,  that  the  spirit  of  the  human  race  finds  its 
ideal.  To  reach  this  ideal,  culture  is  an  indispensable 
aid,  and  that  is  the  true  value  of  culture.'  "  ' 

In  such  passages  as  these  Arnold  comes  as  near  as 
he  ever  comes  to  defining  the  perfect  human  type. 
He  does  not  profess  to  define  it  universally  and  in  ab- 
stract terms,  for  indeed  he  "  hates  "  abstractions  almost 
as  inveterately  as  Burke  hated  them.  He  does  not 
even  describe  concretely  for  men  of  his  own  time  and 
nation  the  precise  equipoise  of  powers  essential  to  per- 
fection. Yet  he  names  these  powers,  suggests  the 
ends  toward  which  they  must  by  their  joint  working 
contribute,  and  illustrates  through  examples  the  evil 
effects  of  the  preponderance  or  absence  of  one  and 
another.  Finally,  in  the  course  of  his  many  discus- 
sions, he  describes  in  detail  the  method  by  which  the 

1  Selections,  p.  152- 


XXII  INTRODUCTION. 

delicate  adjustment  of  these  rival  powers  may  be 
secured  in  the  typical  man  ;  suggests  who  is  to  be  the 
judge  of  the  conflicting  claims  of  these  powers, 
and  indicates  the  process  by  which  this  judge  may 
most  persuasively  lay  his  opinions  before  those  whom 
he  wishes  to  influence.  The  method  for  the  attain- 
ment of  the  perfect  type  is  culture ;  the  censor  of 
defective  types  and  the  judge  of  the  rival  claims  of 
the  co-operant  powers  is  the  critic  ;  and  the  process  by 
which  this  judge  clarifies  his  own  ideas  and  enforces 
his  opinions  on  others  is  criticism. 


III. 


We  are  now  at  the  centre  of  Arnold's  theory  of  life 
and  hold  the  keyword  to  his  system  of  belief,  so  far  as 
he  had  a  system.  His  reasons  for  attaching  to  the 
work  of  the  critic  the  importance  he  palpably  attached 
to  it,  are  at  once  apparent.  Criticism  is  the  method 
by  which  the  perfect  type  of  human  nature  is  at  any 
moment  to  be  apprehended  and  kept  in  uncontami- 
nate  clearness  of  outline  before  the  popular  imagina- 
tion. The  ideal  critic  is  the  man  of  nicest 
discernment  in  matters  intellectual,  moral,  aesthetic, 
social  ;  of  perfect  equipoise  of  powers  ;  of  delicately 
pervasive  sympathy  ;  of  imaginative  insight;  who  grasps 
comprehensively  the  whole  life  of  his  time  ;  who  feels 
its  vital  tendencies  and  is  intimately  aware  of  its  most 
insistent  preoccupations  ;  who  also  keeps  his  orienta- 
tion toward  the  unchanging  norms  of  human  endeavor : 
and  who  is  thus  able  to  note  and  set  forth  the  imper- 


INTRODUCTION.  xxill 

fections  in  existing  types  of  human  nature  and  to  urge 
persuasively  a  return  in  essential  particulars  to  the 
normal  type.  The  function  of  criticism,  then,  is  the 
vindication  of  the  ideal  human  type  against  perverting 
influences,  and  Arnold's  prose  writings  will  for  the 
most  part  be  found  to  have  been  inspired  in  one  form 
or  another  by  a  single  purpose  :  the  correction  of  ex- 
cess in  some  human  activity  and  the  restoration  of  that 
activity  to  its  proper  place  among  the  powers  that  make 
up  the  ideal  human  type. 

Culture  and  Anarchy  (1869)  was  the  first  of  Arnold's 
books  to  illustrate  adequately  this  far-reachingconcep- 
tion  of  criticism.  His  special  topic  is,  in  this  case, 
social  conditions  in  England.  Politicians,  he  urges, 
whose  profession  it  is  to  deal  with  social  questions,  are 
engrossed  in  practical  matters  and  biassed  by  party 
considerations  ;  they  lack  the  detachment  and  breadth 
of  view  to  see  the  questions  at  issue  in  their  true  rela- 
tions to  abstract  standards  of  right  and  wrong.  They 
mistake  means  for  ends,  machinery  for  the  results  that 
machinery  is  meant  to  secure  ;  they  lose  all  sense  of 
values  and  exalt  temporary  measures  into  matters 
of  sacred  import  ;  finally  they  come  to  that  pass  of 
ineptitude  which  Arnold  symbolizes  by  the  enthusiasm 
of  Liberals  over  the  measure  to  enable  a  man  to  marry 
his  deceased  wife's  sister.  What  is  needed  to  correct 
these  absurd  misapprehensions  is  the  free  play  of  criti- 
cal intelligence.  The  critic  from  his  secure  coign  of 
vantage  must  examine  social  conditions  dispassion- 
ately ;  he  must  determine  what  is  essentially  wrong  in 
the  inner  lives  of  the  various  classes  of  men  around 
him  and  so  reveal  the  real  sources  of  those  social  evils 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION. 

which  politicians  are  trying  to  remedy  by  external 
readjustments  and  temporary  measures. 

And  this  is  just  the  task  that  Arnold  undertakes  in 
Culture  and  Anarchy.  He  sets  himself  to  consider 
English  society  in  its  length  and  breadth  with  a  view 
to  discovering  what  is  its  essential  constitution,  what 
are  the  typical  classes  that  enter  into  it,  and  what  are 
the  characteristics  of  these  classes.  So  far  as  concerns 
classification,  he  ultimately  accepts,  it  is  true,  as  ade- 
quate to  his  purpose  the  traditional  division  of  English 
society  into  upper,  middle,  and  lower  classes.  But  he 
then  goes  on  to  give  an  analysis  of  each  of  these 
classes  that  is  novel,  penetrating,  in  the  highest  degree 
stimulating.  He  takes  a  typical  member  of  each  class 
and  describes  him  in  detail,  intellectually,  morally, 
socially;  he  points  out  his  sources  of  strength  and  his 
sources  of  weakness.  He  compares  him  as  a  type 
with  the  abstract  ideal  of  human  excellence  and  notes 
wherein  his  powers  "fall  short  or  exceed."  He  indi- 
cates the  reaction  upon  the  social  and  political  life  of 
the  nation  of  these  various  defects  and  excesses, 
their  inevitable  influence  in  producing  social  misad- 
justment  and  friction.  Finally,  he  urges  that  the  one 
remedy  that  will  correct  these  errant  social  types  and 
bring  them  nearer  to  the  perfect  human  type  is  culture, 
increase  in  vital  knowledge. 

The  details  of  Arnold's  application  of  this  concep- 
tion of  culture  as  a  remedy  for  the  social  evils  of  the 
time,  every  reader  may  follow  out  for  himself  in 
Culture  and  Anarchy.  One  point  in  Arnold's  concep- 
tion, however,  is  to  be  noted  forthwith;  it  is  a  crucial 
point  in  its  influence   on  his  theorizings.     By  culture 


IN  TROD  UCTION.  xx  v 

Arnold  means  increase  of  knowledge;  yes,  but  he 
means  something  more;  culture  is  for  Arnold  not 
merely  an  intellectual  matter.  Culture  is  the  best 
knowledge  made  operative  and  dynamic  in  life  and 
character.  Knowledge  must  be  vitalized  ;  it  must  be 
intimately  conscious  of  the  whole  range  of  human 
interests;  it  must  ultimately  subserve  the  whole 
nature  of  man.  Continually,  then,  as  Arnold  is  plead- 
ing for  the  spread  of  ideas,  for  increase  of  light,  for 
the  acceptance  on  the  part  of  his  fellow-countrymen 
of  new  knowledge  from  the  most  diverse  sources,  he 
is  as  keenly  alive  as  anyone  to  the  dangers  of  over- 
intellectualism.  The  undue  development  of  the 
intellectual  powers  is  as  injurious  to  the  individual  as 
any  other  form  of  deviation  from  the  perfect  human 
type. 

This  distrust  of  over-intellectualism  is  the  ultimate 
ground  of  Arnold's  hostility  to  the  claims  of  Physical 
Science  to  primacy  in  modern  education.  His  ideas 
on  the  relative  educational  value  of  the  physical 
sciences  and  of  the  humanities  are  set  forth  in  the 
well-known  discourse  on  Literature  and  Science} 
Arnold  is  ready,  no  one  is  more  ready,  to  accept  the 
conclusions  of  science  as  to  all  topics  that  fall  within 
its  range;  whatever  its  authenticated  spokesmen  have 
to  say  upon  man's  origin,  his  moral  nature,  his  rela- 
tions to  his  fellows,  his  place  in  the  physical  universe, 
his  religions,  his  sacred  books — all  these  utterances  are 
to  be  received  with  entire  loyalty  so  far  as  they  can 
be  shown  to  embody  the  results  of  expert  scientific 

1  Selections,  p.  104. 


XXVI  INTRODUCTION. 

observation  and  thought.  But  for  Arnold  the  great 
importance  of  modern  scientific  truth  does  not  for  a 
moment  make  clear  the  superiority  of  the  physical 
sciences  over  the  Humanities  as  a  means  of  educa- 
tional discipline.  The  study  of  the  sciences  tends 
merely  to  intellectual  development,  to  the  increase  of 
mental  power  ;  the  study  of  literature  on  the  other 
hand  trains  a  man  emotionally  and  morally,  develops 
his  human  sympathies,  sensitizes  him  temperamentally, 
rouses  his  imagination,  and  elicits  his  sense  of  beauty. 
Science  puts  before  the  student  the  crude  facts  of 
nature,  bids  him  accept  them  dispassionately,  rid 
himself  of  all  discoloring  moods  as  he  watches  the 
play  of  physical  force,  and  convert  himself  into  pure 
intelligence  ;  he  is  simply  to  observe,  to  analyze,  to 
classify,  and  to  systematize,  and  he  is  to  go  through 
these  processes  continually  with  facts  that  have  no 
human  quality,  that  come  raw  from  the  great  whirl  of 
the  cosmic  machine.  As  a  discipline,  then,  for  the 
ordinary  man,  the  study  of  science  tends  not  a  whit 
toward  humanization,  toward  refinement,  toward 
temperamental  regeneration  ;  it  tends  only  to  develop 
an  accurate  trick  of  the  senses,  fine  observation,  crude 
intellectual  strength.  These  powers  are  of  very  great 
importance ;  but  they  may  also  be  trained  in  the 
study  of  literature,  while  at  the  same  time  the  student, 
as  Sir  Philip  Sidney  long  ago  pointed  out,  is  being  led 
and  drawn  "  to  as  high  a  perfection  as  our  degenerate 
souls,  made  worse  by  their  clay  lodgings,  can  be 
capable  of."  Arnold,  then,  with  characteristic  anxiety 
for  the  integrity  of  the  human  type,  urges  the  superior 
worth  to  most  young  men  of  a  literary  rather  than  a 


INTRODUCTION-.  xxvii 

scientific    training.     Literature    nourishes   the   whole 
spirit  of  man  ;  science  ministers  only  to  the  intellect. 

The  same  insistent  desire  that  culture  be  vital  is  at 
the  root  of  Arnold's  discomfort  in  the   presence  of 
German  scholarship.     For  the  thoroughness  and  the 
disinterestedness  of  this  scholarship  he  has  great  re- 
spect; but  he  cannot  endure  its  trick  of  losing  itself  in 
the  letter,  its  "  pedantry,  slowness,"  its  way  of  "  fum- 
bling" after  truth,   its  ''ineffectiveness."1     "In  the 
German  mind,"  he  exclaims  in  Literature  and  Dogma, 
"  as  in  the  German  language,  there  does  seem  to  be 
something    splay,    something   blunt-edged,    unhandy, 
infelicitous, — some  positive  want  of  straightforward, 
sure  perception."  2    Of  scholarship  of  this  splay  variety, 
that  comes  from  exaggerated  intellectuality  and  from 
lack  of  a  delicate  temperament  and  of  nice  perceptions, 
Arnold  is  intolerant.     Such  scholarship  he  finds  work- 
ing its  customary  mischief  in  Professor  Francis  New- 
man's translation  of  Homer,  and,  accordingly,  he  gives 
large  parts  of  the  lectures  on  Translating  Homer  to  the 
illustration  of  its  shortcomings  and  maladroitness  ;  he 
is  bent  on  showing  how  inadequate  is  great  learning 
alone  to  cope  with  any  nice  literary  problem.     New- 
man's philological  knowledge  of  Greek  and  of  Homer 
is  beyond  dispute,  but  his  taste  may  be  judged  from  his 
assertion  that  Homer's  verse,  if  we  could  hear  the  liv- 
ing Homer,    would   affect    us    *'  like  an   elegant  and 
simple  melody  from  an  African  of  the  Gold  Coast."  ' 
The  remedy  for  such   inept  scholarship  lies  in  cul- 

1  Celtic  Literature,  p.  75.         l  Literature  and  Dogma,  p.  xxi. 
*  On  Translating  Homer,  p.  295 . 


xxvm  INTRODUCTION. 

ture,  in  the  vitalization  of  knowledge.  The  scholar 
must  not  be  a  mere  knower  ;  all  his  powers  must  be 
harmoniously  developed. 

One  last  illustration  of  Arnold's  insistence  that 
knowledge  be  vital,  may  be  drawn  from  his  writings 
on  religion  and  theology.  Again  criticism  and  cul- 
ture are  the  passwords  that  open  the  way  to  a 
new  and  better  order  of  things.  Formulas,  Arnold 
urges,  have  fastened  themselves  constrainingly  upon 
the  English  religious  mind.  Traditional  interpreta- 
tions of  the  Bible  have  come  to  be  received  as  be- 
yond cavil.  These  interpretations  are  really  human 
inventions — the  product  of  the  ingenious  think- 
ing of  theologians  like  Calvin  and  Luther.  Yet 
they  have  so  authenticated  themselves  that  for 
most  readers  to-day  the  Bible  means  solely  what 
it  meant  for  the  exacerbated  theological  mind  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  If  religion  is 
to  be  vital,  if  knowledge  of  the  Bible  is  to  be  genuine 
and  real,  there  must  be  a  critical  examination  of  what 
this  book  means  for  the  disinterested  intelligence  of 
to-day;  the  Bible,  as  literature,  must  be  interpreted 
anew,  sympathetically  and  imaginatively;  the  moral 
inspiration  the  Bible  has  to  offer,  even  to  men  who 
are  rigidly  insistent  on  scientific  habits  of  thought  and 
standards  of  historical  truth,  must  be  disengaged 
from  what  is  unverifiable  and  transitory,  and  made 
real  and  persuasive.  "  I  write,"  Arnold  declares,  "  to 
convince  the  lover  of  religion  that  by  following  habits 
of  intellectual  seriousness  he  need  not,  so  far  as  re- 
ligion is  concerned,  lose  anything.  Taking  the  Old 
Testament   as   Israel's    magnificent   establishment  of 


IN  TROD  UC 7  ION.  xx  ix 

the  theme,  Righteousness  is  salvation!  taking  th»  New 
as  the  perfect  elucidation  by  Jesus  of  what  righteous- 
ness is  and  how  salvation  is  »von,  I  do  not  fear  com- 
paring even  the  power  over  the  soul  and  imagination 
of  the  Bible,  taken  in  this  sense, — a  sense  which  is  at 
the  same  time  solid, — with  the  like  power  in  the  old 
materialistic  and  miraculous  sense  for  the  Bible, 
which  is  not."  '  This  definition  of  what  Arnold  hopes 
to  do  for  the  Bible  may  be  supplemented  by  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  method  in  which  culture  works  toward  the 
ends  desired  :  "  Difficult,  certainly,  is  the  right  read- 
ing of  the  Bible,  and  true  culture,  too,  is  difficult. 
For  true  culture  implies  not  only  knowledge,  but  right 
tact  and  justness  of  judgment,  forming  themselves 
by  and  with  knowledge;  without  this  tact  it  is  not  true 
culture.  Difficult,  however,  as  culture  is,  it  is  neces- 
sary. For,  after  all,  the  Bible  is  not  a  talisman,  to 
be  taken  and  used  literally;  neither  is  any  existing 
Church  a  talisman,  whatever  pretensions  of  the  sort 
it  may  make,  for  giving  the  right  interpretation  of  the 
Bible.  Only  true  culture  can  give  us  this  interpreta- 
tion ;  so  that  if  conduct  is,  as  it  is,  inextricably 
bound  up  with  the  Bible  and  the  right  interpretation 
of  it,  then  the  importance  of  culture  becomes  un- 
speakable. For  if  conduct  is  necessary  (and  there  is 
nothing  so  necessary),  culture  is  necessary."2 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  illustrate  Arnold's 
conception  of  culture  and  of  its  value  as  a  specific 
against  all" the  ills  that   society  is   heir   to.     Culture 

1  God  and  the  Bible,  p.  xxxiv. 

2  IJiterature  and  Dogma,  p.  xxV\ 


XXX  INTRODUCTION. 

is  vital  knowledge  and  the  critic  is  its  fosterer 
and  guardian ;  culture  and  criticism  work  together 
for  the  preservation  of  the  integrity  of  the  human 
type  against  all  the  disasters  that  threaten  it  from 
the  storm  and  stress  of  modern  life.  Politics, 
religion,  scholarship,  science  each  has  its  special 
danger  for  the  individual;  each  seizes  upon  him, 
subdues  him  relentlessly  to  the  need  of  the  moment 
and  the  requirements  of  some  particular  function,  and 
converts  him  often  into  a  mere  distorted  fragment 
of  humanity.  Against  this  tyranny  of  the  moment, 
against  the  specializing  and  materializing  trend  of 
modern  life,  criticism  offers  a  powerful  safeguard. 
Criticism  is  ever  concerned  with  archetypal  excel- 
lence, is  continually  disengaging  with  fine  discrimina- 
tion what  is  transitory  and  accidental  from  what  is 
permanent  and  essential  in  all  that  man  busies  himself 
about,  and  is  thus  perpetually  helping  every  individual 
to  the  apprehension  of  his  "best  self,"  to  the  develop- 
ment of  what  is  real  and  absolute  and  the  elimination 
of  what  is  false  or  deforming.  And  in  doing  all  this 
the  critic  acts  as  the  appreciator  of  life;  he  is  not  the 
abstract  thinker.  He  apprehends  the  ideal  intuitively; 
he  reaches  it  by  the  help  of  the  feelings  and  the 
imagination  and  a  species  of  exquisite  tact,  not 
through  a  series  of  syllogisms;  he  is  really  a  poet, 
rather  than  a  philosopher. 

This  conception  of  the  nature  and  functions  of 
criticism  makes  intelligible  and  justifies  a  phrase  of 
Arnold's  that  has  often  been  impugned — his  descrip- 
tion of  poetry  as  a  criticism  of  life.  To  this  account 
of  poetry  it  has  been  objected  that  criticism  is  an  intel- 


INTRODUCTION.  XXXI 

tectual  process,  while  poetry  is  primarily  an  affair  of 
the  imagination  and  the  heart;  and  that  to  regard 
poetry  as  a  criticism  of  life  is  to  take  a  view  of  poetry 
that  tends  to  convert  it  into  mere  rhetorical  moraliz- 
ing; the  decorative  expression  in  rhythmical  language 
of  abstract  truth  about  life.  This  misinterpretation 
of  Arnold's  meaning  becomes  impossible,  if  the  fore- 
going theory  of  criticism  be  borne  in  mind.  Criticism 
is  the  determination  and  the  representation  of  the 
archetypal,  of  the  ideal.  Moreover,  it  is  not  a  deter- 
mination of  the  archetypal  formally  and  theoretically, 
through  speculation  or  the  enumeration  of  abstract 
qualities  ;  Arnold's  disinclination  for  abstractions  has 
been  repeatedly  noted.  The  process  to  be  used  in 
criticism  is  a  vital  process  of  appreciation,  in  which 
the  critic,  sensitive  to  the  whole  value  of  human  life, 
to  the  appeal  of  art  and  of  conduct  and  of  manners  as 
well  as  of  abstract  truth,  feels  his  way  to  a  synthetic 
grasp  upon  what  is  ideally  best  and  portrays  this  con- 
cretely and  persuasively  for  the  popular  imagination. 
Such  an  appreciator  of  life,  if  he  produce  beauty  in 
verse,  if  he  embody  his  vision  of  the  ideal  in  metre, 
will  be  a  poet.  In  other  words,  the  poet  is  the 
appreciator  of  human  life  who  sees  in  it  most  sen- 
sitively, inclusively,  and  penetratingly  what  is  arche- 
typal and  evokes  his  vision  before  others  through 
rhythm  and  rhyme.  In  this  sense  poetry  can  hardly 
be  denied  to  be  a  criticism  of  life  ;  it  is  the  winning 
portrayal  of  the  ideal  of  human  life  as  this  ideal  shapes 
itself  in  the  mind  of  the  poet.  Such  a  criticism  of 
life  Dante  gives,  a  determination  and  portrayal  of 
what   is    ideally    best   in  life  according  to  mediaeval 


XXXll  INTRODUCTION. 

conceptions  ;  a  representation  of  life  in  its  integrity 
with  a  due  adjustment  of  the  claims  of  all  the  powers 
that  enter  into  it — friendship,  ambition,  patriotism, 
loyalty,  religion,  artistic  ardor,  love.  Such  a  criticism 
of  life  Shakspere  incidentally  gives  in  terms  of  the  full 
scope  of  Elizabethan  experience  in  England  ;  with 
due  imaginative  setting  forth  of  the  splendid  vistas  of 
possible  achievement  and  unlimited  development  that 
the  new  knowledge  and  the  discoveries  of  the  Renais- 
sance had  opened.  In  short,  the  great  poet  is  the 
typically  sensitive,  penetrative,  and  suggestive  appre- 
ciator  of  life, —  who  calls  to  his  aid,  to  make  his  appreci- 
ation as  resonant  and  persuasive  as  possible,  as  potent 
as  possible  over  men's  minds  and  hearts,  all  the 
emotional  and  imaginative  resources  of  language, — 
rhythm,  figures,  allegory,  symbolism — whatever  will 
enable  him  to  impose  his  appreciation  of  life  upon 
others  and  to  insinuate  into  their  souls  his  sense  of  the 
relative  values  of  human  acts  and  characters  and 
passions  ;  whatever  will  help  him  to  make  more  over- 
weeningly  beautiful  and  insistently  eloquent  his 
vision  of  beauty  and  truth.  In  this  sense  the  poet  is 
the  limiting  ideal  of  the  appreciative  critic,  and  poetry 
is  the  ultimate  criticism  of  life — the  finest  portrayal 
each  age  can  attain  to  of  what  seems  to  it  in  life  most 
significant  and  delightful. 

IV. 

The  purpose  with  which  Arnold  writes  is  now 
fairly  apparent.  His  aim  is  to  shape  in  happy 
fashion    the     lives    of     his    fellows ;    to    free    them 


IN  TROD  UC  riON.  XXXU1 

from  the  bonds  that  the  struggle  for  existence  imposes 
upon  them;  to  enlarge  their  horizons,  to  enrich  them 
spiritually,  and  to  call  all  that  is  best  within  them  into 
as  vivid  play  as  possible.  When  we  turn  to  Arnold's 
literary  criticism  we  shall  find  this  purpose  no  less 
paramount. 

A  glance  through  the   volumes  of  Arnold's  essays 
renders  it  clear  that  his  selection  of  a  poet  or  a  prose- 
writer   for  discussion  was  usually  made  with  a  view  to 
putting  before  English  readers  some  desirable  trait  of 
character  for  their  imitation,  some  temperamental  ex- 
cellence that  they  are  lacking  in,  some  mode  of  belief 
that  they   neglect,   some  habit   of  thought  that  they 
need  to  cultivate.     Joubert  is  studied  and  portrayed 
because  of  his  single-hearted  love  of  light,  the  purity 
of  his  disinterested  devotion  to  truth,  the  fine  distinc- 
tion of  his  thought,  and  the  freedom  of  his  spirit  from 
the  sordid   stains  of  worldly  life.     Heine  is  a  typical 
leader  in  the  war  of  emancipation,  the  arch-enemy  of 
Philistinism,  and  the  light-hearted  indomitable  foe  of 
prejudice  and  cant.     Maurice  and  Eugenie  de  Guerin 
are  winning  examples  of  the  spiritual  distinction  that 
modern  Romanism  can  induce  in  timely-happy  souls. 
Scherer,  whose  critiques  upon  Milton  and  Goethe  are 
painstakingly  reproduced  in  the  Mixed  Essays,  repre- 
sents  French  critical  intelligence  in  its  best   play- 
acute,  yet  comprehensive;  exacting,  yet  sympathetic; 
regardful    of  nuances  and  delicately  refining,  and  yet 
virile  and  constructive.     Of  the  importance  for  mod- 
ern   England    of   emphasis   on  all  these  qualities  of 
mind  and  heart,  Arnold  was  securely  convinced. 
Moreover,  even  when  his  choice  of  subject  is  deter« 


xxxiv  INTRODUCTION. 

mined  by  other  than  moral  considerations,  his  treat- 
ment is  apt,  none  the  less,  to  reveal  his  ethical  bias. 
Again  and  again  in  his  essays  on  poetry,  for  example, 
it  is  the  substance  of  poetry  that  he  is  chiefly  anxious 
to  handle,  while  the  form  is  left  with  incidental  analy- 
sis. Wordsworth  is  the  poet  of  joy  in  widest  common- 
alty spread — the  poet  whose  criticism  of  life  is  most 
sound  and  enduring  and  salutary.  Shelley  is  afebrile 
creature,  insecure  in  his  sense  of  worldly  values,  "  a 
beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel,  beating  in  the  void  his 
luminous  wings  in  vain."  '  The  essay  on  Heine  helps 
us  only  mediately  to  an  appreciation  of  the  volatile 
beauty  of  Heine's  songs,  or  to  an  intenser  delight  in  the 
mere  surface  play  of  hues  and  moods  in  his  verse. 
From  the  essay  on  George  Sand,  to  be  sure,  we  receive 
many  vivid  impressions  of  the  emotional  and  imagina- 
tive scope  of  French  romance  ;  for  this  essay  was 
written  con  amore  in  the  revivification  of  an  early  mood 
of  devotion,  and  in  an  unusually  heightened  style  ; 
the  essay  on  Emerson  is  the  one  study  that  has  in 
places  somewhat  of  the  same  lyrical  intensity  and  the 
same  vividness  of  realization.  Yet  even  in  the  essay 
on  George  Sand,  the  essayist  is  on  the  whole  bent  on 
revealing  the  temperament  of  the  woman  rather  in  its 
decisive  influence  on  her  theories  of  life  than  in  its 
reaction  upon  her  art  as  art.  There  is  hardly  a  word 
of  the  Romance  as  a  definite  literary  form,  of  George 

1  This  famous  image  was  probably  suggested  by  a  sentence  of 
Joubert's  :  "  Plato  loses  himself  in  the  void,  but  one  sees  the 
play  of  his  wings,  one  hears  their  rustle.  .  .  It  is  good  to 
breathe  his  air,  but  not  to  live  upon  him."  The  translation  is 
Arnold's  own.     See  his  Joubert,  in  Essays  in  Criticism,  i.  294, 


INTRODUCTION.  XXXV 

Sand's  relation  to  earHer  French  writers  of  fiction,  or 
of  her  distinctive  methods  of  work  as  a  portrayer  of 
the  great  human  spectacle.  In  short,  literature  as 
art,  literary  forms  as  definite  modes  of  artistic  expres- 
sion, the  technique  of  the  literary  craftsman  receive 
for  the  most  part  from  Arnold  slight  attention. 

Perhaps,  the  one  piece  of  work  in  which  Arnold  set 
himself  with  some  thoroughness  to  the  discussion  of 
a  purely  literary  problem  was  his  series  of  lectures 
on  Translating  Homer.  These  lectures  were  pro- 
duced before  his  sense  of  responsilility  for  the 
moral  regeneration  of  the  Philistine  had  become  im- 
portunate, and  were  addressed  to  an  academic  audi- 
ence. For  these  reasons,  the  treatment  of  literary 
topics  is  more  disinterested  and  less  interrupted  by 
practical  considerations.  Indeed,  as  will  be  presently 
noted  in  illustration  of  another  aspect  of  Arnold's 
work,  these  lectures  contain  very  subtle  and  delicate 
appreciations,  show  everywhere  exquisite  responsive- 
ness to  changing  effects  of  style,  and  enrich  gratefully 
the  vocabulary  of  impressionistic  criticism. 

Even  in  these  exceptional  lectures,  however,  Arnold's 
ethical  interest  asserts  itself.  In  the  course  of  them 
he  gives  an  account  of  the  grand  style  in  poetry, — of 
that  poetic  manner  that  seems  to  him  to  stand  highest 
in  the  scale  of  excellence;  and  he  carefully  notes  as 
an  essential  of  this  manner, — of  this  grand  style, — its 
moral  power  ;  "  it  can  form  the  character,  ...  is 
edifying,  .  .  .  can  refine  the  raw  natural  man  .  .  . 
can  transmute  him."  '     This  definition  of  the  grand 

xOn  Translating  Homer,  ed.  1883,  p.  197. 


xxxvi  INTRODUCTION. 

style  will  be  discussed  presently  in  connection  with 
Arnold's  general  theory  of  poetry  ;  it  is  enough  to 
note  here  that  it  illustrates  the  inseparableness  in 
Arnold's  mind  between  art  and  morals. 

His  description  of  poetry  as  a  criticism  of  life  has 
already  been  mentioned.  This  doctrine  is  early  im- 
plied in  Arnold's  writings,  for  example,  in  the  passage 
just  quoted  from  the  lectures  on  Translating  Homer; 
it  becomes  more  explicit  in  the  Last  Words  ap- 
pended to  these  lectures,  where  the  critic  asserts 
that  "the  noble  and  profound  application  of  ideas  to 
life  is  the  most  essential  part  of  poetic  greatness."1 
It  is  elaborated  in  the  essays  on  Wordsworth  (1879), 
on  the  Study  of  Poetry  (1880),  and  on  Byron  (1881). 
"It  is  important,  therefore,"  the  essay  on  Words- 
worth assures  us,  "  to  hold  fast  to  this:  that  poetry  is 
at  bottom  a  criticism  of  life;  that  the  greatness  of  a 
poet  lies  in  his  powerful  and  beautiful  application  of 
ideas  to  life, — to  the  question:  How  to  live."2  And 
in  the  essay  on  the  Study  of  Poetry  Arnold  urges  that 
"  in  poetry,  as  a  criticism  of  life  under  the  conditions 
fixed  for  such  a  criticism  by  the  laws  of  poetic  truth 
and  poetic  beauty,  the  spirit  of  our  race  will  find  .  .  . 
as  time  goes  on  and  as  other  helps  fail,  its  consolation 
and  stay."  3 

With  this  doctrine  of  the  indissoluble  connection 
between  the  highest  poetic  excellence  and  essen- 
tial nobleness  of  subject-matter  probably  only  the 
most   irreconcilable  advocates    of  art    for  art's    sake 

1  On  Translating  Homer,  ed.  1883,  p.  295. 

2  Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1891,  p.  143. 
3 Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1S91,  p.  5. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxxvn 

would  quarrel.  So  loyal  an  adherent  of  art  as  Walter 
Pater  suggests  a  test  of  poetic  "  greatness  "  substan- 
tially the  same  with  Arnold's.  "  It  is  on  the  quality 
of  the  matter  it  informs  or  controls,  its  compass,  its 
variety,  its  alliance  to  great  ends,  or  the  depth  of  the 
note  of  revolt,  or  the  largeness  of  hope  in  it,  that  the 
greatness  of  literary  art  depends,  as  The  Divine  Comedy, 
Paradise  Lost,  Les  M is  e  rabies,  The  English  Bible,  are 
great  art."  !  This  may  be  taken  as  merely  a  different 
phrasing  of  Arnold's  principle  that  "  the  greatness  of 
a  poet  lies  in  his  powerful  and  beautiful  application  of 
ideas  to  life — to  the  question  :  How  to  live."  Surely, 
then,  we  are  not  at  liberty  to  press  any  objection  to 
Arnold's  general  theory  of  poetry  on  the  ground  of  its 
being  over-ethical. 

There  remains  nevertheless  the  question  of  emphasis. 
In  the  application  to  special  cases  of  this  test  of  essen- 
tial worth  either  the  critic  may  be  constitutionally 
biassed  in  favor  of  a  somewhat  restricted  range  of  defi- 
nite ideas  about  life,  or  even  when  he  is  fairly  hos- 
pitable toward  various  moral  idioms,  he  may  still  be  so 
intent  upon  making  ethical  distinctions  as  to  fail  to 
give  their  due  to  the  purely  artistic  qualities-of  .poetry. 
It  is  in  this  latter  way  that  Arnold  is  most  apt  to 
offend.  The  emphasis  in  the  discussions  of  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  Byron,  Keats,  Gray,  and  Milton  is 
prevailingly  on  the  ethical  characteristics  of  each 
poet;  and  the  reader  carries  away  from  an  essay  a 
vital  conception  of  the  play  of  moral  energy  and  of 
spiritual  passion  in  the  poet's  verse  rather  than  an  im- 

1  Pater's  Appreciations,  ed.  1890,  p.  36. 


xxxvm  INTRODUCTION. 

pression  of  his  peculiar  adumbration  of  beauty,  the 
characteristic  rhythms  of  his  imaginative  movement, 
the  delicate  color  modulations  on  the  surface  of  his 
image  of  life. 

It  must,  however,  be  borne  in  mind  that  Arnold  has 
specially  admitted  the  incompleteness  of  his  descrip- 
tion of  poetry  as  "a  criticism  of  life  ";  this  criticism, 
he  has  expressly  added,  must  be  made  in  conformity 
"  to  the  laws  of  poetic  truth  and  poetic  beauty." 
"The  profound  criticism  of  life"  characteristic  of 
"  the  few  supreme  masters  "  must  exhibit  itself  "  in 
indissoluble  connection  with  the  laws  of  poetic  truth 
and  beauty."  '  Is  there,  then,  any  account  to  be  found 
in  Arnold  of  these  laws  observance  of  which  secures 
poetic  beauty  and  truth?  Is  there  any  description  of 
the  special  ways  in  which  poetic  beauty  and  truth 
manifest  themselves,  of  the  formal  characteristics  to  be 
found  in  poetry  where  poetic  beauty  and  truth  are 
present  ?  Does  Arnold  either  suggest  the  methods  the 
poet  must  follow  to  attain  these  qualities  or  classify 
the  various  subordinate  effects  through  which  poetic 
beauty  and  truth  invariably  reveal  their  presence? 
The  most  apposite  parts  of  his  writings  to  search  for 
some  declaration  on  these  points  are  the  lectures  on 
Translating  Homer,  and  the  second  series  of  his  essays 
which  deal  chiefly  with  the  study  of  poetry.  Here,  if 
anywhere,  we  ought  to  find  a  registration  of  beliefs  as 
regards  the  precise  nature  and  source  of  poetic  beauty 
and  truth. 

And  indeed  throughout  all  these  writings,  which  run 

1  Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1S91,  pp.  186-187. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxxix 

through  a  considerable  period  of  time,  Arnold  makes 
fairly  consistent  use  of  a  half  dozen  categories  for  his 
analyses  of  poetic  effects.  These  categories  are  sub- 
stance and  matter,  style  and  manner,  diction  and 
movement.  Of  the  substance  of  really  great  poetry  we 
learn  repeatedly  that  it  must  be  made  up  of  ideas  of 
profound  significance  "  on  man,  on  nature,  and  on 
human  life."  '  This  is,  however,  merely  the  prescrip- 
tion already  so  often  noted  that  poetry,  to  reach  the 
highest  excellence,  must  contain  a  penetrating  and 
ennobling  criticism  of  life.  In  the  essay  on  Byron, 
however,  there  is  something  formally  added  to  this 
requisition  of  "truth  and  seriousness  of  substance  and 
matter  "  ;  besides  these,  "  felicity  and  perfection  of 
diction  and  manner,  as  these  are  exhibited  in  the  best 
poets,  are  what  constitute  a  criticism  of  life  made  in 
conformity  with  the  laws  of  poetic  truth  and  poetic 
beauty."  3  There  must  then  be  felicity  and  perfection 
of  diction  and  manner  in  poetry  of  the  highest  order  ; 
these  terms  are  somewhat  vague,  but  serve  at  least  to 
guide  us  on  our  analytic  way.  In  the  essay  on  the 
Study  of  Poetry,  there  is  still  further  progress  made  in 
the  description  of  poetic  excellence.  "  To  the  style 
and  manner  of  the  best  poetry,  their  special  character, 
their  accent  is  given  by  their  diction,  and,  even  yet 
more,  by  their  movement.  And  though  we  distinguish 
between  the  two  characters,  the  two  accents,  of  supe- 
riority," [/.  <?.,  between  the  superiority  that  comes  from 
substance  and  the  superiority  that  comes  from  style], 


1  Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1891,  p.  141. 

2  Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1891,  p.  187. 


xl  IN  TROD  UC  TION. 

"  yet  they  are  nevertheless  vitally  connected  one  with 
the  other.  The  superior  character  of  truth  and  ser- 
iousness, in  the  matter  and  substance  of  the  best  poetry, 
is  inseparable  from  the  superiority  of  diction  and 
movement  marking  its  style  and  manner.  The  two 
superiorities  are  closely  related,  and  are  in  steadfast 
proportion  one  to  the  other.  So  far  as  high  poetic 
truth  and  seriousness  are  wanting  to  a  poet's  matter 
and  substance,  so  far  also,  we  may  be  sure,  will  a  high 
poetic  stamp  of  diction  and  movement  be  wanting  to 
his  style  and  manner."  ' 

Now  that  there  is  this  intimate  and  necessary  union 
between  a  poet's  mode  of  conceiving  life  and  his  man- 
ner of  poetic  expression,  is  hardly  disputable.  The 
image  of  life  in  a  poet's  mind  is  simply  the  outside 
world  transformed  by  the  complex  of  sensations  and 
thoughts  and  emotions  peculiar  to  the  poet  ;  and  this 
image  inevitably  frames  for  itself  a  visible  and  audible 
expression  that  delicately  utters  its  individual  char- 
acter— distills  that  character  subtly  through  word 
and  sentence,  rhythm  and  metaphor,  image  and 
figure  of  speech,  and  through  their  integration  into  a 
vital  work  of  art.  Moreover,  the  poet's  style  is  itself 
in  general  the  product  of  the  same  personality  which 
determines  his  image  of  life,  and  must  therefore  be 
like  his  image  of  life  delicately  striated  with  the  mark- 
ings of  his  play  of  thought  and  feeling  and  fancy. 
The  close  correspondence,  then,  between  the  poet's 
subject-matter  and  his  manner  or  style  is  indubitable. 
The  part  of  Arnold's  conclusion  or  the  point  in  his 

1  Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1891,  p.  22. 


INTRODUCTION.  xli 

method  that  is  regrettable  is  the  exclusive  stress  that 
he  throws  on  this  dependence  of  style  upon  worth  of 
substance.  He  converts  style  into  a  mere  function 
of  the  moral  quality  of  a  poet's  thought  about  life,  and 
fails  to  furnish  any  delicately  studied  categories  for 
the  appreciation  of  poetic  style  apart  from  its  moral 
implications. 

Take,  for  example,  the  judgments  passed  in  the 
Study  of  Poetry  upon  various  poets  ;  in  every  instance 
the  estimate  of  the  poet's  style  turns  upon  the  quality 
of  his  thought  about  life.  Is  it  Chaucer  whose  right 
to  be  ranked  as  a  classic  is  mooted  ?  He  cannot  be 
ranked  as  a  classic  because  "  the  substance  of  "  his 
poetry  has  not  "high  seriousness."1  Is  it  Burns 
whose  relative  rank  is  being  fixed  ?  Burns  through 
lack  of  "absolute  sincerity"  falls  short  of  "high 
seriousness,"  and  hence  is  not  to  be  placed  among  the 
classics.  And  thus  continually  with  Arnold,  effects  of 
style  are  merged  in  moral  qualities,  and  the  reader 
gains  little  insight  into  the  refinements  of  poetical 
manner  except  as  these  derive  directly  from  the  poet's 
moral  consciousness.  The  categories  of  style  and 
manner,  diction  and  movement,  are  everywhere  subor- 
dinated to  the  categories  of  substance  and  matter,  are 
treated  as  almost  wholely  derivative.  "  Felicity  and 
perfection  of  diction  and  manner,"  wherever  they  are 
admittedly  present,  are  usually  explained  as  the  direct 
result  of  the  poet's  lofty  conception  of  life.  Such  a 
treatment  of  questions  of  style  does  not  further  us 
much  on  our  way  to  a  knowledge  of  the  "laws  of 
poetic  beauty  and  poetic  truth." 

1  Essays,  ii. ,  ed.  1891,  p.  33. 


xlii  INTRODUCTION. 

Doubtless  somewhat  more  disinterested  analyses  of 
style  may  be  found  in  the  lectures  on  Translating 
Homer.  These  discussions  do  not  establish  laws,  but 
they  at  least  consider  poetic  excellence  as  for  the 
moment  dependent  on  something  else  than  the  moral 
mood  of  the  poet.  For  example,  the  grand  style  is 
analyzed  into  two  varieties,  the  grand  style  in  severity 
and  the  grand  style  in  simplicity.  Each  of  these 
styles  is  described  and  illustrated  so  that  it  enters  into 
the  reader's  imagination  and  increases  his  sensitive- 
ness to  poetic  excellence.1  Again,  a  bit  later  in  the 
lectures,  the  distinction  between  real  simplicity  and 
sophisticated  simplicity  in  poetic  style  is  drawn  with 
exquisite  delicacy  of  appreciation.2  Here  there  is 
an  effort  to  deal  directly  with  artistic  effects  for 
their  own  sake  and  apart  from  their  significance 
as  expressive  of  ethos.  Yet,  even  in  these  cases,  the 
effort  to  be  faithful  to  the  artistic  point  of  view  is 
only  partly  successful.  For  example,  the  essential 
beauty  of  the  grand  style  in  severity  is  referred  to  our 
consciousness  of  "  the  great  personality  .  .  .  the 
noble  nature,  in  the  poet  its  author";3  and  the  sim- 
plesse  of  Tennyson's  style  is  explained  at  least  psycho- 
logically, if  not  morally,  as  resulting  from  the  subtle 
sophistication  of  his  thought.4 

To  bring  together,  then,  the  results  of  this  some- 
what protracted  analysis  :  Arnold  ostensibly  admits 
that  poetry,  to  be  of  the  highest  excellence,  must,  in 

1  On  Translating  Homer,  ed.  1883,  pp.  265-267. 
9  Ibid.,  p.  288. 
3  Ibid.,  p.  268. 
4 Ibid.,  p.  288. 


INTRODUCTION.  xliii 

addition  to  containing  a  criticism  of  life  of  profound 
significance,  conform  to  the  laws  of  poetic  beauty  and 
truth.  He  accepts  as  necessary  categories  for  the 
appreciation  of  poetical  excellence  style  and  manner, 
diction  and  movement.  Yet  his  most  important  gen- 
eral assertion  about  these  latter  purely  formal  deter- 
minations of  poetry  is  that  they  are  inseparably 
connected  with  substance  and  matter;  similarly,  when- 
ever he  discusses  artistic  effects,  he  is  apt  to  find  them 
interesting  simply  as  serving  to  interpret  the  artist's 
prevailing  mood  toward  life;  and  even  where,  as  is  at 
times  doubtless  the  case,  he  escapes  for  the  moment 
from  his  ethical  interest  and  appreciates  with  imagina- 
tive delicacy  the  individual  quality  of  a  poem  or  a 
poet's  style,  he  is  nearly  always  found  sooner  or  later 
explaining  this  quality  as  originating  in  the  poet's 
peculiar  ethos.  As  for  any  systematic  or  even  inci- 
dental determination  of  "  the  laws  of  poetic  beauty 
and  truth,"  we  search  for  it  through  his  pages  in  vain. 


But  it  would  be  wrong  to  attribute  this  lack  in 
Arnold's  essays  of  theorizing  about  questions  of  art 
solely  to  his  preoccupation  with  conduct.  For  theory 
in  general  and  for  abstractions  in  general, — for  all 
sorts  of  philosophizing, — Arnold  openly  professes  his 
dislike.  "  Perhaps  we  shall  one  day  learn,"  he  says  in 
his  essay  on  Wordsworth,  "  to  make  this  proposition 
general,  and  to  say:  Poetry  is  the  reality,  philosophy 
the  illusion."  !     This  distrust  of  the  abstract  and  the 

1  Essays,  ii.,  ed.  1891,  p.  149. 


xliv  INTRODUCTION. 

purely  theoretical  shows  itself  throughout  his  literary 
criticism  and  determines  many  of  its  characteristics. 

His  hostility  to  systems  and  to  system-makers  has 
already  been  pointed  out  ;  this  hostility  admits  of  no 
exception  in  favor  of  the  systematic  critic.  "  There  is 
the  judgment  of  ignorance,  the  judgment  of  incom- 
patibility, the  judgment  of  envy  and  jealousy.  Fi- 
nally, there  is  the  systematic  judgment,  and  this  judg- 
ment is  the  most  worthless  of  all.  .  .  Its  author  has 
not  really  his  eye  upon  the  professed  object  of  his 
criticism  at  all,  but  upon  something  else  which  he 
wants  to  prove  by  means  of  that  object.  He  neither 
really  tells  us,  therefore,  anything  about  the  object, 
nor  anything  about  his  own  ignorance  of  the  object. 
He  never  fairly  looks  at  it;  he  is  looking  at  something 
else."  '  This  hypnotizing  effect  is  what  Arnold  first 
objects  to  and  fears  in  a  theory;  the  critic  with  a 
theory  is  bound  to  find  what  he  goes  in  search  of,  and 
nothing  else.  He  goes  out — to  change  somewhat 
one  of  Arnold's  own  figures — like  Saul,  the  son  of 
Kish,  in  search  of  his  father's  asses;  and  he  comes 
back  with  the  authentic  animals  instead  of  the  tradi- 
tional windfall  of  a  kingdom. 

Nor  is  preoccupation  with  a  pet  theory  the  sole  in- 
capacity that  Arnold  finds  in  the  systematic  critic; 
such  a  critic  is  almost  sure  to  be  over-intellectualized, 
a  victim  of  abstractions  and  definitions,  dependent  for 
his  judgments  on  conceptions,  and  lacking  in  temper- 
amental sensitiveness  to  the  appeal  of  literature  as 
art.     He  is  merely  a  triangulator  of  the  landscape  of 

1  Mixed  Essays,  ed.  1883,  p.  209. 


INTRODUCTION.  xlv 

literature,  and  moves  resolutely  in  his  process  of  tri- 
angulation  from  one  fixed  point  to  another;  he  finds 
significant  only  such  parts  of  his  experience  as  he  can 
sum  up  in  a  definite  abstract  formula  at  some  one  of 
these  arbitrary  halting  places;  his  ultimate  opinion  of 
the  ground  he  covers  is  merely  the  sum  total  of  a  com- 
paratively small  number  of  such  abstract  expressions. 
To  the  manifold  wealth  of  the  landscape  in  color,  in 
light,  in  shade,  and  in  poetic  suggestiveness,  the  sys- 
tem-monger, the  theoretical  critic,  has  all  the  time 
been  blind. 

Knowledge,  too,  even  though  it  be  not  severely  sys- 
tematized, may  interfere  with  the  free  play  of  critical 
intelligence.  An  oversupply  of  unvitalized  facts  or 
ideas,  even  though  these  facts  or  ideas  be  not  organ- 
ized into  an  importunate  theory,  may  prove  disastrous 
to  the  critic.  The  danger  to  which  the  critic  is 
exposed  from  this  source,  Arnold  has  amusingly  set 
forth  in  his  Last  Words  on  Homeric  translation  : 
"  Much  as  Mr.  Newman  was  mistaken  when  he  talked 
of  my  rancour,  he  is  entirely  right  when  he  talks  of  my 
ignorance.  And  yet,  perverse  as  it  seems  to  say  so, 
I  sometimes  find  myself  wishing,  when  dealing  with 
these  matters  of  poetical  criticism,  that  my  ignor- 
ance were  even  greater  than  it  is.  To  handle  these 
matters  properly,  there  is  needed  a  poise  so  perfect 
that  the  least  overweight  in  any  direction  tends  to 
destroy  the  balance.  Temper  destroys  it,  a  crotchet 
destroys  it,  even  erudition  may  destroy  it.  To  press 
to  the  sense  of  the  thing  with  which  one  is  dealing, 
not  to  go  off  on  some  collateral  issue  about  the  thing, 
is   the  hardest    matter    in    the    world.      The    '  thing 


xlvi  INTRODUCTION. 

itself  '  with  which  one  is  here  dealing — the  critical 
perception  of  poetic  truth — is  of  all  things  the  most 
volatile,  elusive,  and  evanescent;  by  even  pressing  too 
impetuously  after  it,  one  runs  the  risk  of  losing  it. 
The  critic  of  poetry  should  have  the  finest  tact,  the 
nicest  moderation,  the  most  free,  flexible,  and  elastic 
spirit  imaginable;  he  should  be,  indeed,  the  'ondoyant 
et  divers,'  the  undulating  and  diverse  being  of  Mon- 
taigne. The  less  he  can  deal  with  his  object  simply 
and  freely,  the  more  things  he  has  to  take  into  ac- 
count in  dealing  with  it, — the  more,  in  short,  he  has 
to  encumber  himself, — so  much  the  greater  force  of 
spirit  he  needs  to  retain  his  elasticity.  But  one  can- 
not exactly  have  this  greater  force  by  wishing  for  it; 
so,  for  the  force  of  spirit  one  has,  the  load  put  upon  it 
is  often  heavier  than  it  will  well  bear.  The  late 
Duke  of  Wellington  said  of  a  certain  peer  that  '  it 
was  a  great  pity  his  education  had  been  so  far  too 
much  for  his  abilities.'  In  like  manner  one  often  sees 
erudition  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  owner's  critical 
faculty.  Little  as  I  know,  therefore,  I  am  always  ap- 
prehensive, in  dealing  with  poetry,  lest  even  that  little 
should  prove  too  much  for  my  abilities."  ! 

Discreet  ignorance,  then,  is  Arnold's  counsel  of 
perfection  to  the  would-be  critic.  And,  accordingly, 
he  himself  is  desultory  from  conscientious  motives  and 
unsystematic  by  fixed  rule.  There  are  two  passages 
in  his  writings  where  he  explains  confidentially  his 
methods  and  his  reasons  for  choosing  them.  The 
first  occurs  in  a  letter  of  1864  ;    "My  sinuous,  easy. 

1On  Translating  Homer,  p.  245. 


INTRODUCTION.  xlvii 

unpolemical  mode  of  proceeding  has  been  adopted 
by  me  first  because  I  really  think  it  the  best  way 
of  proceeding,  if  one  wants  to  get  at,  and  keep 
with,  truth;  secondly,  because  I  am  convinced  only 
by  a  literary  form  of  this  kind  being  given  to  them 
can  ideas  such  as  mine  ever  gain  any  access  in  a 
country  such  as  ours."  '  The  second  passage  occurs 
in  the  Preface  to  his  first  series  of  Essays  in  Criticism 
(1865):  "  Indeed,  it  is  not  in  my  nature — some  of  my 
critics  would  rather  say  not  in  my  power — to  dispute 
on  behalf  of  any  opinion,  even  my  own,  very  obsti- 
nately. To  try  and  approach  truth  on  one  side  after 
another,  not  to  strive  or  cry,  not  to  persist  in  pressing 
forward,  on  any  one  side,  with  violence  and  self-will, 
it  is  only  thus,  it  seems  to  me,  that  mortals  may  hope 
to  gain  any  vision  of  the  mysterious  Goddess,  whom 
we  shall  never  see  except  in  outline.  He  who  will  do 
nothing  but  fight  impetuously  toward  her,  on  his  own 
one  favorite  particular  line,  is  inevitably  destined  to 
run  his  head  into  the  folds  of  the  black  robe  in  which 
she  is  wrapped."  2 

Such,  then,  is  Arnold's  ideal  of  critical  method.  The 
critic  is  not  to  move  from  logical  point  to  point,  as,  for 
example,  Francis  Jeffrey  was  wont,  in  his  essays,  to 
move,  with  an  advocate's  devotion  to  system  and  de- 
sire to  make  good  some  definite  conclusion.  Rather 
the  critic  is  to  give  rein  to  his  temperament ; 
he  is  to  make  use  of  intuitions,  imaginations,  hints 
that  touch  the  heart,  as  well  as  abstract  principles, 
syllogisms,  and  arguments  ;  and  so  he  is  to  reach  out 

1  Letters,  i.  282.  2  Essays,  i.,  ed.  1891,  p.  v. 


xlviii  INTRODUCTION. 

tentatively  through  all  his  powers  after  truth  if  haply 
he  may  find  her  ;  in  the  hope  that  thus,  keeping  close 
to  the  concrete  aspects  of  his  subject,  he  may  win  to 
an  ever  more  inclusive  and  intimate  command  of  its 
surface  and  configurations.  The  type  of  mind  most 
apt  for  this  kind  of  critical  work  is  the  "free,  flexible 
and  elastic  spirit,"  described  in  the  passage  from  the 
Last  Words  quoted  a  moment  ago  ;  the  "  undulating 
and  diverse  being  of  Montaigne." 

A  critic  of  this  type  will  palpably  concern  himself 
slightly  with  abstractions,  with  theorizings,  with 
definitions.  And  indeed  Arnold's  unwillingness  to 
define  becomes  at  times  almost  ludicrous.  "  Noth- 
ing has  raised  more  questioning  among  my  critics 
than  these  words — noble,  the  grand  style.  .  .  Alas  ! 
the  grand  style  is  the  last  matter  in  the  world  for 
verbal  definition  to  deal  with  adequately.  One  may 
say  of  it  as  is  said  of  faith:  'One  must  feel  it  in 
order  to  know  it.'  "1  Similarly  in  the  Study  of  Poetry, 
Arnold  urges  :  "  Critics  give  themselves  great  labour 
to  draw  out  what  in  the  abstract  constitutes  the 
characters  of  a  high  quality  of  poetry.  It  is  much 
better  to  have  recourse  to  concrete  examples.  .  . 
If  we  are  asked  to  define  this  mark  and  accent  in  the 
abstract,  our  answer  must  be  :  No,  for  we  should 
thereby  be  darkening  the  question,  not  clearing  it." 
Again  :  "  I  may  discuss  what  in  the  abstract  consti- 
tutes the  grand  style;  but  that  sort  of  general  dis- 
cussion never  much  helps  our  judgment  of  particular 
instances."  2 

1  On  Translating  Homer,  ed.  1883,  p.  264. 
2 Ibid.,  p.  194. 


IN  TROD  UCTION.  xl  ix 

These  passages  are  characteristic;  rarely  indeed 
does  Arnold  consent  to  commit  himself  to  the  control 
of  a  definition.  He  prefers  to  convey  into  his  readers' 
mind  a  living  realization  of  the  thing  or  the  object 
he  treats  of  rather  than  to  put  before  them  its  logically 
articulated  outlines. 

Moreover,  when  he  undertakes  the  abstract  dis- 
cussion of  a  general  term,  he  is  apt  to  be  capricious 
in  his  treatment  of  it  and  to  follow  in  his  subdivisions 
and  classifications  some  external  clew  rather  than 
logical  structure.  In  the  essay  on  Celtic  Literature 
he  discusses  the  various  ways  of  handling  nature  in 
poetry  and  finds  four  such  ways — the  conventional 
way,  the  faithful  way,  the  Greek  way,  and  the  magical 
way.  The  classification  recommends  itself  through  its 
superficial  charm  and  facility,  yet  rests  on  no  psycho- 
logical truth,  or  at  any  rate  carries  with  it,  as  Arnold 
treats  it,  no  psychological  suggestions  ;  it  gives  no 
swift  insight  into  the  origin  in  the  poet's  mind  and 
heart  of  these  different  modes  of  conceiving  of  nature. 
Hence,  the  classification,  as  Arnold  uses  it,  is  merely  a 
temporary  makeshift  for  rather  gracefully  grouping 
effects,  not  an  analytic  interpretation  of  these  effects 
through  a  reduction  of  them  to  their  varying  sources 
in  thought  and  feeling. 

This  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  Arnold's  critical 
methods.  As  we  read  his  essays  we  have  no  sense  of 
making  definite  progress  in  the  comprehension  of  lit- 
erature as  an  art  among  arts,  as  well  as  in  the  apprecia- 
tion of  an  individual  author  or  poem.  We  are  not 
being  intellectually  oriented  as  we  are  in  reading  the 
most  stimulating  critical  work;  we  are  not  getting  an 


1  INTRODUCTION. 

ever  surer  sense  of  the  points  of  the  compass.  Essays, 
to  have  this  orienting  power,  need  not  be  continually 
prating  of  theories  and  laws;  they  need  not  be 
rabidly  scientific  in  phrase  or  in  method.  But  they 
must  issue  from  a  mind  that  has  come  to  an  under- 
standing with  itself  about  the  genesis  of  art  in  the 
genius  of  the  artist;  about  the  laws  that,  when  the 
utmost  plea  has  been  made  for  freedom  and  caprice, 
regulate  artistic  production  ;  about  the  history  and 
evolution  of  art  forms  ;  and  about  the  relations  of 
the  arts  among  themselves  and  to  the  other  activities 
of  life.  It  may  fairly  be  doubted  if  Arnold  had  ever 
wrought  out  for  himself  consistent  conclusions  on 
all  or  on  most  of  these  topics.  Indeed,  the  mere 
juxtaposition  of  his  name  and  a  formal  list  of  these 
topics  suggests  the  kind  of  mock-serious  depreca- 
tory paragraph  with  which  the  "unlearned  belletristic 
trifler  "  was  wont  to  reply  to  such  strictures — a  para- 
graph sure  to  carry  in  its  tail  a  stinging  bit  of  sarcasm 
at  the  expense  of  pedantry  and  unenlightened  formal- 
ism. And  yet,  great  as  must  be  every  one's  respect  for 
the  thorough  scholarship  and  widely  varied  accom- 
plishment that  Arnold  made  so  light  of  and  carried  off 
so  easily,  the  doubt  must  nevertheless  be  suggested 
whether  a  more  vigorous  grasp  on  theory,  and  a  more 
consistent  habit  of  thinking  out  literary  questions  to 
their  principles,  would  not  have  invigorated  his  work 
as  a  critic  and  given  it  greater  permanence  and  richer 
suggestiveness. 


INTRODUCTION. 


VI. 


It  is,  then,  as  an  appreciator  of  what  may  perhaps 
be  called  the  spiritual  qualities  of  literature  that 
Arnold  is  most  distinctively  a  furtherer  of  criticism. 
An  appreciator  of  beauty, — of  true  beauty  wherever 
found, — that  is  what  he  would  willingly  be;  and  yet, 
as  the  matter  turns  out,  the  beauty  that  he  most  surely 
enjoys  and  reveals  has  invariably  a  spiritual  aroma, — 
is  the  finer  breath  of  intense  spiritual  life.  Or,  if 
spiritual  be  too  mystical  a  word  to  apply  to  Homer 
and  Goethe,  perhaps  Arnold  should  rather  be  termed 
an  appreciator  of  beauty  that  is  the  effluence  of  noble 
character. 

The  importance  of  appreciation  in  criticism,  Arnold 
has  himself  described  in  one  of  the  Mixed  Essays  : 
"Admiration  is  salutary  and  formative;  .  .  .  but 
things  admirable  are  sown  wide,  and  are  to  be  gathered 
here  and  gathered  there,  not  all  in  one  place  ;  and 
until  we  have  gathered  them  wherever  they  are  to  be 
found,  we  have  not  known  the  true  salutariness  and 
formativeness  of  admiration.  The  quest  is  large; 
and  occupation  with  the  unsound  or  half  sound,  de- 
light in  the  not  good  or  less  good,  is  a  sore  let  and 
hindrance  to  us.  Release  from  such  occupation  and 
delight  sets  us  free  for  ranging  farther,  and  for  per- 
fecting our  sense  of  beauty.  He  is  the  happy  man, 
who,  encumbering  himself  with  the  love  of  nothing 
which  is  not  beautiful,  is  able  to  embrace  the  greatest 
number  of  things  beautiful  in  his  life."  ' 

1  Mixed  Essays,  ed.  1883,  p.  210. 


Hi  INTRODUCTION. 

On  this  disinterested  quest  then,  for  the  beautiful, 
Arnold  in  his  essays  nominally  fares  forth.  Yet  cer- 
tain limitations  in  his  appreciation,  over  and  beyond 
his  prevalent  ethical  interest,  must  forthwith  be  noted. 
Music,  painting,  and  sculpture  have  seemingly  noth- 
ing to  say  to  him.  In  his  Letters  there  are  only  a  few 
allusions  to  any  of  these  arts,  and  such  as  occur  do 
not  surpass  in  significance  the  comments  of  the  chance 
loiterer  in  foreign  galleries  or  visitor  of  concert  rooms. 
In  his  essays  there  are  none  of  the  correlations  be- 
tween the  effects  and  methods  of  literature  and  those 
of  kindred  arts  that  may  do  so  much  either  to  indi- 
vidualize or  to  illustrate  the  characteristics  of  poe- 
try. For  Arnold,  literature  and  poetry  make  up  the 
whole  range  of  art. 

Within  these  limits,  however, — the  limits  imposed  by 
preoccupation  with  conduct  and  by  carelessness  of  all 
arts  except  literature, — Arnold  has  been  a  prevailing 
revealer  of  beauty.  Not  his  most  hostile  critic  can 
question  the  delicacy  of  his  perception,  so  far  as  he 
allows  his  perception  free  play.  On  the  need  of  nice 
and  ever  nicer  discriminations  in  the  apprehension  of 
the  shifting  values  of  literature,  he  has  himself  often 
insisted.  Critics  who  let  their  likes  and  dislikes  assert 
themselves  turbulently,  to  the  destruction  of  fine  dis- 
tinctions, always  fall  under  Arnold's  condemnation. 
"  When  Mr.  Palgrave  dislikes  a  thing,  he  feels  no  pres- 
sure constraining  him,  either  to  try  his  dislike  closely 
or  to  express  it  moderately  ;  he  does  not  mince  mat- 
ters, he  gives  his  dislike  all  its  own  way.  .  .  He  dis- 
likes the  architecture  of  the  Rue  Rivoli,  and  he  puts 
it  on  the  level  with  the  architecture  of  Belgravia  and 


INTRODUCTION.  liii 

Gower  Street  ;  he  lumps  them  all  together  in  one  con- 
demnation ;  he  loses  sight  of  the  shade,  the  distinction 
which  is  here  everything."  '  For  a  similar  blurring 
of  impressions,  Professor  Newman  is  taken  to  task, 
though  in  Newman's  case  the  faulty  appreciations  are 
due  to  a  different  cause:  "  Like  all  learned  men,  ac- 
customed to  desire  definite  rules,  he  draws  his  con- 
clusions too  absolutely  ;  he  wants  to  include  too  much 
under  his  rules  ;  he  does  not  quite  perceive  that  in 
poetical  criticism  the  shade,  the  fine  distinction,  is 
everything  ;  and  that,  when  he  has  once  missed  this, 
in  all  he  says  he  is  in  truth  but  beating  the  air."2  To 
appreciate  literature  more  and  more  sensitively  in 
terms  of  "  an  undulating  and  diverse  temperament," 
this  is  the  ideal  that  Arnold  puts  before  literary  criti- 
cism. 

His  own  appreciations  of  poetry  are  probably 
richest,  most  discriminating,  and  most  disinterested  in 
the  lectures  on  Translating  Homer.  The  imaginative 
tact  is  unfailing  with  which  he-renders  the  contour 
and  the  surface-qualities  of  the  various  poems  that  he 
comments  on;  and  equally  noteworthy  is  the  divining 
instinct  with  which  he  captures  the  spirit  of  each 
poet  and  sets  it  before  us  with  a  phrase  or  a  symbol. 
The  "  inversion  and  pregnant  conciseness  "  of  Milton's 
style,  its  "laborious  and  condensed  fullness";  the 
plainspokenness,  freshness,  vigorousness,  and  yet 
fancifulness  and  curious  complexity  of  Chapman's 
style;    Spenser's    "  sweet    and    easy   slipping   move' 

1  Essays,  i.,  ed.  1891,  p.  73. 

2  On  Translating  Homer,  ed.  1883,  p.  246. 


liv  INTRODUCTION, 

ment";  Scott's  "bastard  epic  style";  the  "one 
continual  falsetto  "  of  Macaulay's  "  pinchbeck  Roman 
Ballads  "j  all  these  characterizations  are  delicately 
sure  in  their  phrasing  and  suggestion,  and  are  the 
clearer  because  they  are  made  to  stand  in  continual 
contrast  with  Homer's  style,  the  rapidity,  directness, 
simplicity,  and  nobleness  of  which  Arnold  keeps  ever 
present  in  our  consciousness.  Incidentally,  too,  such 
suggestive  discriminations  as  that  between  simplesse 
and  simplicity  the  "  semblance  "  of  simplicity  and  the 
"  real  quality,"  are  made  ours  by  the  critic,  as  he  goes 
on  with  his  pursuit  of  the  essential  qualities  of 
Homeric  thought  and  diction.  To  read  these  lectures 
is  a  thoroughly  tempering  process;  a  process  that 
renders  the  mind  and  imagination  permanently  finer 
in  texture,  more  elastic,  more  sensitively  sure  in  tone, 
and  subtly  responsive  to  the  demands  of  good  art. 

The  essay  on  the  Study  of  Poetry  which  was  written 
as  preface  to  Ward's  English  Poets  is  also  rich  in 
appreciation,  and  at  times  almost  as  disinterested  as 
the  lectures  on  Homer  ;  yet  perhaps  never  quite  so 
disinterested.  For  in  the  Study  of  Poetry  Arnold  is 
persistently  aware  of  his  conception  of  "  the  grand 
style  "and  bent  on  winning  his  readers  to  make  it 
their  own.  Only  poets  who  attain  this  grand  style 
deserve  to  be  "classics,"  and  the  continual  insistence 
on  the  note  of  "high  seriousness" — its  presence  or 
absence — becomes  rather  wearisome.  Moreover, 
Arnold's  preoccupation  with  this  ultimate  manner  and 
quality  tends  to  limit  a  trifle  the  freedom  and  delicate 
truth  of  his  appreciations  of  other  manners  and  minor 
qualities.     At  times,  one  is  tempted  to  charge  Arnold 


IN  TR  OD  UC  T/OAT.  1  v 

with  some  of  the  unresponsiveness  of  temperament 
that  he  ascribes  to  systematic  critics,  and  to  find 
even  Arnold  himself  under  the  perilous  sway  of  a  fixed 
idea.  Yet,  when  all  is  said,  the  Study  of  Poetry  is  full 
of  fine  things  and  does  much  to  widen  the  range  of  ap- 
preciation and  at  the  same  time  to  make  appreciation 
more  certain.  "  The  liquid  diction,  the  fluid  move- 
ment of  Chaucer,  his  large,  free,  sound  representation 
of  things";  Burns's  "touches  of  piercing,  sometimes 
almost  intolerable  pathos,"  his  "  archness,"  too,  and  his 
"  soundness"  ;  Shelley,  "that  beautiful  spirit  building 
his  many-coloured  haze  of  words  and  images  '  Pinna- 
cled dim  in  the  intense  inane'  ";  these,  and  other  inter- 
pretations like  them,  are  easily  adequate  and  carry  the 
qualities  of  each  poet  readily  into  the  minds  and 
imaginations  of  sympathetic  readers.  Appreciation  is 
much  the  richer  for  this  essay  on  the  Study  of  Poetry 
Nor  must  Arnold's  suggestive  appreciations  of  prose 
.Style  be  forgotten.  Several  of  them  have  passed  into 
standard  accounts  of  clearly  recognized  varieties  of 
prose  diction.  Arnold's  phrasing  of  the  matter  has 
made  all  sensitive  English  readers  permanently  more 
sensitive  to  "  the  warm  glow,  blithe  movement,  and 
soft  pliancy  of  life  "  of  the  Attic  style,  and  also  perma- 
nently more  hostile  to  "the  over-heavy  richness  and 
encumbered  gait  "  of  the  Asiatic  style.  Equally  good 
is  his  account  of  the  Corinthian  style  :  "It  has  glitter 
without  warmth,  rapidity  without  ease,  effectiveness 
without  charm.  Its  characteristic  is  that  it  has  no 
soul;  all  it  exists  for,  is  to  get  its  ends,  to  make  its 
points,  to  damage  its  adversaries,  to  be  admired,  to 
triumph.     A  style  so  bent  on  effect  at  the  expense 


1  vi  IN  TROD  UCTION. 

of  soul,  simplicity,  and  delicacy;  a  style  so  little 
studious  of  the  charm  of  the  great  models;  so  far 
from  classic  truth  and  grace,  must  surely  be  said  to 
have  the  note  of  provinciality."1  "Middle-class 
Macaulayese "  is  his  name  for  Hepworth  Dixon's 
style;  a  style  which  he  evidently  regards  as  likely  to 
gain  favor  and  establish  itself.  "  1  call  it  Macau- 
layese .  .  .  because  it  has  the  same  internal  and  ex- 
ternal characteristics  as  Macaulay's  style;  the  external 
characteristic  being  a  hard  metallic  movement  with 
nothing  of  the  soft  play  of  life,  and  the  internal  char- 
acteristic being  a  perpetual  semblance  of  hitting  the 
right  nail  on  the  head  without  the  reality.  And  I  call 
it  middle-class  Macaulayese,  because  it  has  these 
faults  without  the  compensation  of  great  studies  and 
of  conversance  with  great  affairs,  by  which  Macaulay 
partly  redeemed  them."  ;  It  will,  of  course,  be  noted 
that  these  latter  appreciations  deal  for  the  most  part 
with  divergences  from  the  beautiful  in  style,  but  they 
none  the  less  quicken  and  refine  the  aesthetic  sense. 

Finally,  throughout  the  two  series  of  miscellaneous 
essays  there  is,  in  the  midst  of  much  business  with 
ethical  matters,  an  often-recurring  free  play  of  imagi- 
nation in  the  interests,  solely  and  simply,  of  beauty. 
Many  are  the  happy  windfalls  these  essays  offer  of 
delicate  interpretation  both  of  poetic  effect  and  of 
creative  movement,  and  many  are  the  memorable 
phrases  and  symbols  by  which  incidentally  the  essen- 
tial quality  of  a  poet  or  prose  writer  is  securely  lodged 
in  the  reader's  consciousness. 

1  Essays,  i.,  ed.  1891,  p.  75. 

*  Friendship's  Garland,  ed.  1883,  p.  279. 


IN  TROD  UCTION.  lvii 

And  yet,  wide  ranging  and  delicately  sensitive  as  are 
Arnold's  appreciations,  the  feeling  will  assert  itself,  in 
a  final  survey  of  his  work  in  literary  criticism,  that  he 
nearly  always  has  designs  on  his  readers  and  that 
appreciation  is  a  means  to  an  end.  The  end  in  view 
is  the  exorcism  of  the  spirit  of  Philistinism.  Arnold's 
conscience  is  haunted  by  this  hideous  apparition  as 
Luther's  was  by  the  devil,  and  he  is  all  the  time 
metaphorically  throwing  his  inkstand  at  the  spectre. 
Or,  to  put  the  matter  in  another  way,  his  one  dominat- 
ing wish  is  to  help  modern  Englishmen  to  "conquer 
the  hard  unintelligence,"  which  is  "their  bane;  to 
supple  and  reduce  it  by  culture,  by  a  growth  in  the 
variety,  fullness,  and  sweetness  of  their  spiritual  life  "  ; 
and  the  appreciative  interpretation  of  literature  to  as 
wide  a  circle  of  readers  as  possible  seems  to  him  one 
of  the  surest  ways  of  thus  educing  in  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen new  spiritual  qualities.  It  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  Matthew  Arnold  was  the  son  of  Thomas 
Arnold,  master  of  Rugby  ;  there  is  in  him  a  hereditary 
pedagogic  bias — an  inevitable  trend  toward  moral 
suasion.  The  pedagogic  spirit  has  suffered  a  sea- 
change  into  something  rich  and  strange,  and  yet 
traces  of  its  origin  linger  about  it.  Criticism  with 
Arnold  is  rarely,  if  ever,  irresponsible;  it  is  our  school- 
master to  bring  us  to  culture. 

In  a  letter  of  1863  Arnold  speaks  of  the  great  trans- 
formation which  "  in  this  concluding  half  of  the  cen- 
tury the  English  spirit  is  destined  to  undergo."  "  I 
shall  do,"  he  adds,  "  what  I  can  for  this  movement  in 
literature;  freer  perhaps  in  that  sphere  than  I  could 
be  in  any  other,  but  with  the  risk  always  before  me,  if 


lvii  i  IN  TROD  UCTION. 

I  cannot  charm  the  wild  beast  of  Philistinism  while 
I  am  trying  to  convert  him,  of  being  torn  in  pieces 
by  him."1  In  charming  the  wild  beast  Arnold  ulti- 
mately succeeded;  and  yet  there  is  a  sense  in  which  he 
fell  a  victim  to  his  very  success.  The  presence  of  the 
beast,  and  the  necessity  of  fluting  to  him  debonairly 
and  winningly,  fastened  themselves  on  Arnold's  imagi- 
nation and  subdued  him  to  a  comparatively  narrow 
range  of  subjects  and  set  of  interests.  From  the  point 
of  view,  at  least,  of  what  is  desirable  in  appreciative 
criticism  Arnold  was  injured  by  his  sense  of  responsi- 
bility ;  he  lacks  the  detachment  and  the  delicate 
mobility  that  are  the  redeeming  traits  of  modern 
dilettantism. 

If,  then,  we  regard  Arnold  as  a  writer  with  a  task  to 
accomplish,  with  certain  definite  regenerative  pur- 
poses to  carry  out,  with  a  body  of  original  ideas  about 
the  conduct  of  life  to  inculcate,  we  must  conclude  that 
he  succeeded  admirably  in  his  work,  followed  out  his 
ideas  with  persistence  and  temerity  through  many 
regions  of  human  activity,  and  embodied  them  with 
unwearying  ingenuity  and  persuasiveness  in  a  wide 
range  of  discussions.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  con- 
sider him  solely  as  a  literary  critic,  we  are  forced  to 
admit  that  he  is  not  the  ideal  literary  critic;  he  is  not 
the  ideal  literary  critic  because  he  is  so  much  more, 
and  because  his  interests  lie  so  decisively  outside  of 
art.  Nor  is  this  opinion  meant  to  imply  an  ultimate 
theory  of  art  for  art's  sake,  or  to  suggest  any  limita- 
tion of  criticism  to  mere  impressionism  or  appreciation. 

1  Letters,  ed.  1896,  i.  240. 


INTRODUCTION.  lix 

Literature  must  be  known  historically  and  philo- 
sophically before  it  can  be  adequately  appreciated  ; 
that  is  emphatically  true.  Art  may  or  may  not  be 
justifiable  solely  as  it  is  of  service  to  society;  that 
need  not  be  debated.  But,  in  any  event,  literary 
criticism,  if  it  is  to  reach  its  utmost  effectiveness, 
must  regard  works  of  art  for  the  time  being  as  self- 
justified  integrations  of  beauty  and  truth,  and  so 
regarding  them  must  record  and  interpret  their  power 
and  their  charm.  And  this  temporary  isolating  proc- 
ess is  just  the  process  which  Arnold  very  rarely,  for 
the  reasons  that  have  been  traced  in  detail,  is  willing 
or  able  to  go  through  with. 

VII. 

When  we  turn  to  consider  Arnold's  literary  style, 
we  are  forced  to  admit  that  this,  too,  has  suffered  from 
the  strenuousness  of  his  moral  purpose;  it  has  been 
unduly  sophisticated,  here  and  there,  because  of  his 
desire  to  charm  "  the  wild  beast  of  Philistinism." 
To  this  purpose  and  this  desire  is  owing,  at  least  in 
part,  that  falsetto  note — that  half-querulous,  half- 
supercilious  artificiality  of  tone, — that  is  now  and 
then  to  be  heard  in  his  writing.  In  point  of  fact,  it 
would  be  easy  to  exaggerate  the  extent  to  which  this 
note  is  audible  ;  an  unprejudiced  reader  will  find  long 
continuous  passages  of  even  Arnold's  most  elaborately 
designed  writing  free  from  any  trace  of  undue  self- 
consciousness  or  of  gentle  condescension.  And  yet 
it  is  undeniable  that  when,  apart  from  his  Letters. 
Arnold's  prose,  as  a  whole,  is  compared  with  that  ot 


lx  introduction: 

such  a  writer,  for  example,  as  Cardinal  Newman, 
there  is  in  Arnold's  style,  as  the  ear  listens  for  the 
quality  of  the  bell  metal,  not  quite  the  same  beauti- 
fully clear  and  sincere  resonance.  There  seems  to  be 
now  and  then  some  unhappy  warring  of  elements, 
some  ill-adjustment  of  overtones,  a  trace  of  some  flaw 
in  mixing  or  casting. 

Are  not  these  defects  in  Arnold's  style  due  to  his 
somewhat  self-conscious  attempt  to  fascinate  a  recal- 
citrant public?  Is  it  not  the  assumption  of  a  manner 
that  jars  on  us  often  in  Arnold's  less  happy  moments? 
Has  he  not  the  pose  of  the  man  who  overdoes  bravado 
with  the  hope  of  getting  cleverly  through  a  pass  which 
he  feels  a  bit  trying  to  his  nerves?  Arnold  has  a  keen 
consciousness  of  the  very  stupid  beast  of  Philistinism 
lying  in  wait  for  him  ;  and  in  the  stress  of  the  moment 
he  is  guilty  of  a  little  exaggeration  of  manner;  he  is 
just  a  shade  unnatural  in  his  flippancy;  he  treads  his 
measure  with  an  unduly  mincing  flourish. 

Arnold's  habit  of  half-mocking  self-depreciation  and 
of  insincere  apology  for  supposititious  personal  short- 
comings has  already  been  mentioned;  to  his  contro- 
versial writings,  particularly,  it  gives  often  a  raspingly 
supercilious  tone.  He  insists  with  mock  humbleness 
that  he  is  a  "  mere  belletristic  trifler  ";  that  he  has  no 
"system  of  philosophy  with  principles  coherent,  inter- 
dependent, subordinate,  and  derivative  "  to  help  him  in 
the  discussion  of  abstract  questions.  He  assures  us 
that  he  is  merely  "  a  feeble  unit  "  of  the  "  English 
middle  class  ";  he  deprecates  being  called  a  professor 
because  it  is  a  title  he  shares  "  with  so  many  dis- 
tinguished men — Professor  Pepper,  Professor  Ander- 


INTRODUCTION.  lxi 

•on,  Professor  Frickel,  and  others — who  adorn  it,"  he 
feels,  much  more  than  he  does.  These  mock  apologies 
are  always  amusing  and  yet  a  bit  exasperating,  too. 
Why  should  Arnold  regard  it,  we  ask  ourselves,  as 
such  a  relishing  joke — the  possibility  that  he  has  a 
defect?  The  implication  of  almost  arrogant  self-satis- 
faction is  troublesomely  present  to  us.  Such  passages 
certainly  suggest  that  Arnold  had  an  ingrained  con- 
tempt for  the  "  beast  "  he  was  charming. 

Yet,  when  all  is  said,  much  of  this  supercilious  satire 
is  irresistibly  droll,  and  refuses  to  be  gainsaid.  One 
of  his  most  effective  modes  of  ridiculing  his  opponents 
is  through  conjuring  up  imaginary  scenes  in  which 
some  ludicrous  aspect  of  his  opponent's  case  or  char- 
acter is  thrown  into  diverting  prominence.  Is  it  the 
pompous,  arrogant  self-satisfaction  of  the  prosperous 
middle-class  tradesman  that  Arnold  wishes  to  satirize? 
And  more  particularly  is  it  the  futility  of  the  Saturday 
Review  in  holding  up  Benthamism — the  systematic 
recognition  of  such  a  smug  man's  ideal  of  selfish  hap- 
piness— as  the  true  moral  ideal?  Arnold  represents 
himself  as  travelling  on  a  suburban  railway  on  which 
a  murder  has  recently  been  committed,  and  as  falling 
into  chat  with  the  middle-class  frequenters  of  this 
route.  The  demoralization  of  these  worthy  folk, 
Arnold  assures  us,  was  "  something  bewildering." 
"  Myself  a  transcendentalist  (as  the  Saturday  Review 
knows),  I  escaped  the  infection  ;  and,  day  after  day, 
I  used  to  ply  my  agitated  fellow-travellers  with  all  the 
consolations  which  my  transcendentalism  would  nat- 
urally suggest  to  me.  I  reminded  them  how  Caesar 
refused  to  take  precautions  against  assassination,  be- 


lxii  INTRODUCTION. 

cause  life  was  not  worth  having  at  the  price  of  an 
ignoble  solicitude  for  it.  I  reminded  them  what 
insignificant  atoms  we  all  are  in  the  life  of  the  world. 
'Suppose  the  worst  to  happen,'  I  said,  addressing  a 
portly  jeweller  from  Cheapside;  '  suppose  even  your- 
self to  be  the  victim;  il  ny  a  pas  d'homme  ne'cessaire. 
We  should  miss  you  for  a  day  or  two  upon  the  Wood- 
ford Branch;  but  the  great  mundane  movement 
would  still  go  on,  the  gravel  walks  of  your  villa  would 
still  be  rolled,  dividends  would  still  be  paid  at  the 
Bank,  omnibuses  would  still  run,  there  would  still  be 
the  old  crush  at  the  corner  of  Fenchurch  Street.'  All 
was  of  no  avail.  Nothing  could  moderate  in  the 
bosom  of  the  great  English  middle  class,  their  passion- 
ate, absorbing,  almost  bloodthirsty  clinging  to  life." 
This  is,  of  course,  "  admirable  fooling";  and  equally 
of  course,  the  little  imaginary  scene  serves  per- 
fectly the  purposes  of  Arnold's  argument  and  turns 
into  ridicule  the  narrowness  and  overweening  self- 
importance  of  the  smug  tradesman. 

Another  instance  of  Arnold's  ability  to  conjure  up 
fancifully  a  scene  of  satirical  import  may  be  adduced 
from  the  first  chapter  of  Culture  and  Anarchy.  Arnold 
has  been  ridiculing  the  worship  of  mere  "  bodily 
health  and  vigour  "  as  ends  in  themselves.  "  Why, 
one  has  heard  people,"  he  exclaims,  "  fresh  from  read- 
ing certain  articles  of  the  Times  on  the  Registrar 
General's  returns  of  marriages  and  births  in  this  coun- 
try, who  would  talk  of  our  large  English  families  in 
quite  a  solemn  strain,  as  if  they  had  something  in 
itself,  beautiful,  elevating,  and  meritorious  in  them  ; 
as  if  the  British  Philistine  would  have  only  to  present 


INTRODUCTION.  lxiii 

himself  before  the  Great  Judge  with  his  twelve  chil- 
dren, in  order  to  be  received  among  the  sheep  as  a 
matter  of  right  !  "  ' 

It  is  noticeable  that  only  in  such  scenes  and  pas- 
ages  as  these  is  Arnold's  imagination  active — scenes 
and  passages  that  are  a  bit  satirical,  not  to  say  mali- 
cious; on  the  other  hand,  scenes  that  have  the  limpid 
light  and  the  winning  quality  of  many  in  Cardinal 
Newman's  writings — scenes  that  rest  the  eye  and 
commend  themselves  simply  and  graciously  to  the 
heart — are  in  Arnold's  prose  hardly,  if  ever,  to  be 
found.  This  seernr  the  less  easy  to  explain  inasmuch 
as  his  poetry,  though  of  course  not  exceptionally 
rich  in  color,  nevertheless  shows  everywhere  a  deli- 
cately sure  sense  of  the  surface  of  life.  Nor  is  it 
only  the  large  sweep  of  the  earth-areas  or  the 
diversified  play  of  the  human  spectacle  that  is 
absent  from  Arnold's  prose  ;  his  imagination  does 
not  even  make  itself  exceptionally  felt  through  con- 
crete phrasing  or  warmth  of  coloring;  his  style  is 
usually  intellectual  almost  to  the  point  of  wanness,  and 
has  rarely  any  of  the  heightened  quality  of  so-called 
poetic  prose.  In  point  of  fact,  this  conventional  re- 
straint in  Arnold's  style,  this  careful  adherence  to  the 
mood  of  prose,  is  a  very  significant  matter  ;  it  distin- 
guishes Arnold  both  as  a  writer  and  as  a  critic  of  life 
from  such  men  as  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Ruskin.  The  mean- 
ing of  this  quietly  conventional  manner  will  be  later 
considered  in  the  discussion  of  Arnold's  relation  to 
his  age. 

The  two  pieces  of  writing  where  Arnold's  style  has 

1  Selections,  p.  158. 


lxiv  INTRODUCTION. 

most  fervor  and  imaginative  glow  are  the  essay  on 
George  Sand  and  the  discourse  upon  Emerson.  In 
each  case  he  was  returning  in  the  choice  of  his  sub- 
ject to  an  earlier  enthusiasm,  and  was  reviving  a  mood 
that  had  for  him  a  certain  romantic  consecration. 
George  Sand  had  opened  for  him,  while  he  was  still 
at  the  University,  a  whole  world  of  rich  and  half- 
fearful  imaginative  experience  ;  a  world  where  he  had 
delighted  to  follow  through  glowing  southern  land- 
scapes the  journeyings  of  picturesquely  rebellious 
heroes  and  heroines,  whose  passionate  declamation  laid 
an  irresistible  spell  on  his  English  fancy.  Her  love 
and  portrayal  of  rustic  nature  had  also  come  to  him 
as  something  graciously  different  from  the  saner  and 
more  moral  or  spiritual  interpretation  of  rustic  life  to 
be  found  in  Wordsworth's  poems.  Her  personality, 
in  all  its  passionate  sincerity  and  with  pathetically 
unrewarded  aspirations,  had  imposed  itself  on  Arnold's 
imagination  both  as  this  personality  was  revealed  in 
her  books  and  as  it  was  afterward  encountered  in 
actual  life.  All  these  early  feelings  Arnold  revives  in 
a  memorial  essay  written  in  1877,  one  year  after 
George  Sand's  death.  From  first  to  last  the  essay  has 
a  brooding  sincerity  of  tone,  an  unconsidering  frank- 
ness, and  an  intensity  and  color  of  phrase  that  are 
noteworthy.  The  descriptions  of  nature,  both  of  the 
landscapes  to  be  found  in  George  Sand's  romances  and 
of  those  in  the  midst  of  which  she  herself  lived,  have 
a  luxuriance  and  sensuousness  of  surface  that  Arnold 
rarely  condescends  to.  The  tone  of  unguarded  devo- 
tion may  be  represented  by  part  of  the  concluding 
paragraph  of    the  essay:  "It  is  silent,  that   eloquent 


INTRODUCTION.  Ixv 

voice  !  it  is  sunk,  that  noble,  that  speaking  head! 
We  sum  up,  as  we  best  can,  what  she  said  to  us,  and 
we  bid  her  adieu.  From  many  hearts  in  many  lands 
a  troop  of  tender  and  grateful  regrets  converge 
toward  her  humble  churchyard  in  Berry.  Let  them 
be  joined  by  these  words  of  sad  homage  from  one  of 
a  nation  which  she  esteemed,  and  which  knew  her 
very  little  and  very  ill."  '  There  can  be  no  question 
of  the  passionate  sincerity  and  the  poetic  beauty  of 
this  passage. 

Comparable  in  atmosphere  and  tone  to  this  essay  on 
George  Sand  is  the  discourse  on  Emerson,  in  certain 
parts  of  which  Arnold  again  has  the  courage  of  his 
emotions.  In  the  earlier  paragraphs  there  is  the  same 
revivification  of  a  youthful  mood  as  in  the  essay  on 
George  Sand.  There  is  also  the  same  only  half- 
restrained  pulsation  in  the  rhythm,  an  emotional  throb 
that  at  times  almost  produces  an  effect  of  metre. 
"  Forty  years  ago,  when  I  was  an  undergraduate  at 
Oxford,  voices  were  in  the  air  there  which  haunt  my 
memory  still.  Happy  the  man  who  in  that  susceptible 
season  of  youth  hears  such  voices!  they  are  a  posses- 
sion to  him  forever."  2  Of  this  discourse,  however, 
only  the  introduction  and  the  conclusion  are  of  this 
intense,  self-communing  passionateness;  the  analysis 
of  Emerson's  qualities  as  writer  and  thinker,  that 
makes  up  the  greater  part  of  the  discourse,  has 
Arnold's  usual  colloquial,  self-consciously  wary  tone. 

A  fairly  complete  survey  of  the  characteristics  of 
Arnold's  style  may  perhaps  best  be  obtained  by  rec- 

1  Mixed  Essays,  ed.  1883,  p.  260. 

2  Discourses  in  America,  ed.  1894,  p.  138. 


lxvi  INTRODUCTION. 

ognizing  in  his  prose  writings  four  distinct  manners. 
First  may  be  mentioned  his  least  compromising, 
severest,  most  exact  style;  it  is  most  consistently 
present  in  the  first  of  the  Mixed  Essays,  that  on 
Democracy  (1861).  The  sentences  are  apt  to  be 
long  and  periodic.  The  structure  of  the  thought 
is  defined  by  means  of  painstakingly  accurate  articu- 
lations. Progress  in  the  discussion  is  systematic  and 
is  from  time  to  time  conscientiously  noted.  The 
tone  is  earnest,  almost  anxious.  A  strenuous,  system- 
atic, responsible  style,  we  may  call  it.  Somewhat 
mitigated  in  its  severities,  somewhat  less  palpably 
official,  it  remains  the  style  of  Arnold's  technical 
reports  upon  education  and  of  great  portions  of  his 
writings  on  religious  topics.  It  is,  however,  most 
adequately  exhibited  in  the  essay  on  Democracy. 

Simpler  in  tone,  easier,  more  colloquial,  more  casual, 
is  the  style  that  Arnold  uses  in  his  literary  essays,  in 
the  uncontroversial  parts  of  the  lectures  on  Trans- 
lating Homer,  and  in  Culture  and  Anarchy.  This 
style  is  characterized  by  its  admirable  union  of  ease, 
simplicity,  and  strength;  by  the  affability  of  its  tone, 
an  affability,  however,  that  never  degenerates  into 
over-familiarity  or  loses  dignified  restraint;  by  its 
disregard  of  method,  or  of  the  more  pretentious 
manifestations  of  method;  and  by  the  delicate  cer- 
tainty, with  which,  when  at  its  best,  it  takes  the 
reader,  despite  its  apparently  casual  movement,  over 
the  essential  aspects  of  the  subject  under  discussion. 
This  is  really  Arnold's  most  distinctive  manner,  and  it 
will  require,  after  his  two  remaining  manners  have  been 
briefly  noted,  some  further  analysis. 


■IN  TR  OD  UC  TION.  1 X  V  ii 

Arnold's  third  style  is  most  apt  to  appear  in  contro- 
versial writings  or  in  his  treatment  of  subjects  where  he 
is  particularly  aware  of  his  enemy,  or  particularly  bent 
on  getting  a  hearing  from  the  inattentive  through 
cleverly  malicious  satire,  or  particularly  desirous  of 
carrying  things  off  with  a  nonchalant  air.  It  appears 
in  the  controversial  parts  of  the  lectures  on  Trans- 
lating Homer,  in  many  chapters  of  Culture  and 
Anarchy,  and  runs  throughout  Friendship 's  Garland. 
Its  peculiarly  rasping  effect  upon  many  readers  has 
already  been  described.  It  is  responsible  for  much 
of  the  prejudice  against  Arnold's  prose. 

Arnold's  fourth  style — intimate,  rich  in  color, 
intense  in  feeling,  almost  lyrical  in  tone — is  the  style 
that  has  just  been  characterized  in  the  discussion  of 
the  essays  on  George  Sand  and  on  Emerson.  There 
are  not  many  passages  in  Arnold's  prose  where  this 
style  has  its  way  with  him.  But  these  passages  are 
so  individual,  and  seem  to  reveal  Arnold  with  such 
novelty  and  truth,  that  the  style  that  pervades  them 
deserves  to  be  put  by  itself. 

The  style  usually  taken  as  characteristically 
Arnold's  is  that  here  classed  as  his  second,  with  a 
generous  admixture  of  the  third.  Many  of  the 
qualities  of  this  style  have  already  been  suggested  as 
illustrative  of  certain  aspects  of  Arnold's  temperament 
or  habits  of  thought.  Various  important  points,  how- 
ever, still  remain  to  be  appreciated. 

Colloquial  in  its  rhythms  and  its  idiom  this  style 
surely  is.  It  is  fond  of  assenting  to  its  own  proposi- 
tions; "well"  and  "yes"  often  begin  its  sentences — 
sis^ns    of   its  casual   and   tentative  mode  of  advance. 


Jxviii  INTRODUCTION. 

Arnold's  frequent  use  of  "well"  and  "yes"  and 
neglect  of  the  anxiously  demonstrative  "now,"  at  the 
opening  of  his  sentences  mark  unmistakably  the 
unrigorousness  of  his  method.  An  easily  negligent 
treatment  of  the  sentence,  too,  is  often  noticeable;  a 
subject  is  left  suspended  while  phrase  follows  phrase, 
or  even  while  clause  follows  clause,  until,  quite  as  in 
ordinary  talk,  the  subject  must  be  repeated,  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sentence  must  be  brought  freshly  to  mind. 
Often  Arnold  ends  a  sentence  and  begins  the  next 
with  the  same  word  or  phrase;  this  trick  is  better 
suited  to  talk  than  to  formal  discourse.  Indeed, 
Arnold  permits  himself  not  a  few  of  the  inaccuracies 
of  everyday  speech.  He  uses  the  cleft  infinitive;  '  he 
introduces  relative  clauses  with  superfluous  "  and  " * 
or  "but";3  he  confuses  the  present  participle  with 
the  verbal  noun  and  speaks,  for  example,  of  "  the 
creating  a  current";  and  he  usually  "tries  and 
does  "  a  thing  instead  of  "  trying  to  do  "  it.  Finally, 
his  prose  abounds  in  exclamations  and  in  Italicized 
words  or  phrases,  and  so  takes  on  much  of  the  rhythm 
and  manner  of  talk.  A  brief  quotation  from  Literature 
and  Dogma  will  make  this  clear.  "  But  the  gloomy, 
oppressive  dream  is  now  over.  '  Let  us  return  to 
Nature!'  And  all  the  world  salutes  with  pride  and 
joy  the  Renascence,  and  prays  to  Heaven  :  '  Oh,  that 
Ishmael  might  live  before  thee  ! '  Surely  the  future 
belongs  to  this  brilliant  newcomer,  with  his  animating 
maxim:  Let  us  return  to  Nature!     Ah,   what  pitfalls 

1  Selections,  p.  116,  1.  24.  2  Selections,  p.  114,  1.  6. 

*  Essays  in  Criticism,  ed.  1891,  i.  88. 


INTRODUCTION.  lxix 

are  in  that  word  Nature !  Let  us  return  to  art  and 
science,  which  are  a  part  of  Nature;  yes.  Let  us 
return  to  a  proper  conception  of  righteousness,  to  a 
true  sense  of  the  method  and  secret  of  Jesus,  which 
have  been  all  denaturalized;  yes.  But,  '  Let  us  return 
to  Nature!' — do  you  mean  that  we  are  to  give  full 
swing  to  our  inclinations? "  '  The  colloquial  character 
of  these  exclamations  and  the  search,  through  the  use 
of  Italics,  for  stress  like  the  accent  of  speech  are 
unmistakable. 

Arnold's  fundamental  reason,  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious, for  the  adoption  of  this  colloquial  tone  and 
manner,  may  probably  be  found  in  the  account  of  the 
ultimate  purpose  of  all  his  writing,  given  near  the  close 
of  Culture  and  Anarchy  j  he  aims,  not  to  inculcate  an 
absolutely  determinate  system  of  truth,  but  to  stir  his 
readers  into  the  keenest  possible  self-questioning  over 
the  worth  of  their  stock  ideas.  "  Socrates  has  drunk 
his  hemlock  and  is  dead;  but  in  his  own  breast  does 
not  every  man  carry  about  with  him  a  possible  Socrates, 
in  that  power  of  disinterested  play  of  consciousness 
upon  his  stock  notions  and  habits,  of  which  this  wise 
and  admirable  man  gave  all  through  his  lifetime  the 
great  example,  and  which  was  the  secret  of  his  incom- 
parable influence?  And  he  who  leads  men  to  call  forth 
and  exercise  in  themselves  this  power,  and  who  busily 
calls  it  forth  and  exercises  it  in  himself,  is  at  the  pres- 
ent moment,  perhaps,  as  Socrates  was  in  his  time, 
more  in  concert  with  the  vital  working  of  men's  minds, 
and  more   effectually  significant,  than   any  House  of 

1  Literature  and  Dogma,  ed.  1893,  p.  321. 


1 X  X  IN  TR  OD  UC  TION. 

Commons'  orator,  or  practical  operator  in  politics."1 
This  dialectical  habit  of  mind  is,  Arnold  believes,  best 
induced  and  stimulated  by  the  free  colloquial  manner 
of  writing  that  he  usually  adopts. 

In  the  choice  of  words,  however,  Arnold  is  not 
noticeably  colloquial.  Less  often  in  Arnold  than  in 
Newman  is  a  familiar  phrase  caught  audaciously  from 
common  speech  and  set  with  a  sure  sense  of  fitness  and 
a  vivifying  effect  in  the  midst  of  more  formal  expres- 
sions. His  style,  though  idiomatic,  stops  short  of  the 
vocabulary  of  every  day;  it  is  nice — instinctively 
edited.  Certain  words  are  favorites  with  him,  and 
moreover,  as  is  so  often  the  case  with  the  literary  tem- 
perament, these  words  reveal  some  of  his  special  pre- 
occupations. Such  words  are  lucidity,  urbanity, 
amenity,  fluid  (as  an  epithet  for  style),  vital,  puissant. 

Arnold  is  never  afraid  of  repeating  a  word  or  a 
phrase,  hardly  enough  afraid  of  this.  His  trick  of 
ending  one  sentence  and  beginning  the  next  with  the 
same  set  of  words  has  already  been  noted.  At  times, 
his  repetitions  seem  due  to  his  attempt  to  write  down 
to  his  public  ;  he  will  not  confuse  them  by  making 
them  grasp  the  same  idea  twice  through  two  different 
forms  of  speech.  Often,  his  repetitions  come  palpa- 
bly from  sheer  fondness  for  his  own  happy  phraseology. 
His  description  of  Shelley  as  "  a  beautiful  and  in- 
effectual angel,  beating  in  the  void  his  luminous  wings 
in  vain,"  pleases  him  so  well  that  he  carries  it  over 
entire  from  one  essay  to  another;  even  a  whole  page 
of  his  writing  is  sometimes  so  transferred. 

1  Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed.  1883,  p.  205. 


INTRODUCTION.  lxxi 

And  indeed  iteration  and  reiteration  of  single  phrases 
or  forms  of  words  is  a  mannerism  with  Arnold,  and  at 
times  proves  one  of  his  most  effective  means  both  for 
stamping  his  own  ideas  on  the  mind  of  the  public  and 
for  ridiculing  his  opponents.  Many  of  his  positive 
formulas  have  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  modern 
literary  man's  equipment.  His  account  of  poetry  as 
"  a  criticism  of  life  ";  his  plea  for  "high  seriousness" 
as  essential  to  a  classic;  his  pleasant  substitute  for  the 
old  English  word  God — "  the  not  ourselves  which 
makes  for  righteousness";  "lucidity  of  mind"; 
"  natural  magic  "  in  the  poetic  treatment  of  nature  ; 
"  the  grand  style  "  in  poetry;  these  phrases  of  his 
have  passed  into  the  literary  consciousness  and  carried 
with  them  at  least  a  superficial  recognition  of  many  of 
his  ideas. 

Iteration  Arnold  uses,  too,  as  a  weapon  of  ridicule. 
He  isolates  some  unluckily  symbolic  phrase  of  his 
opponent's,  points  out  its  damaging  implications  or  its 
absurdity,  and  then  repeats  it  pitilessly  as  an  ironical 
refrain.  The  phrase  gains  in  grotesqueness  at  each 
return — "  sweetening  and  gathering  sweetness  ever- 
more " — and  finally  seems  to  the  reader  to  contain  the 
distilled  quintessence  of  the  foolishness  inherent  in  the 
view  that  Arnold  ridicules.  It  is  in  this  way  that  in 
Culture  and  Anarchy  the  agitation  to  "  enable  a  man  to 
marry  his  deceased  wife's  sister  "  becomes  symbolic  of 
all  the  absurd  fads  of  "  liberal  practitioners."  Simi- 
larly, when  he  is  criticising  the  cheap  enthusiasm  with 
which  democratic  politicians  describe  modern  life, 
Arnold  culls  from  the  account  of  a  Nottingham  child- 
murder  the  phrase,  "  Wragg  is  in  custody,"  and  adds 


Ixxii  INTRODUCTION. 

it  decoratively  after  every  eulogy  on  present  social 
conditions.  Or  again  the  Times  at  a  certain  diplo- 
matic crisis  exhorts  the  Government  to  set  forth 
England's  claims  "  with  promptitude  and  energy";1 
and  this  grandiloquent  and  under  the  circumstances 
empty  phrase  becomes,  as  Arnold  persistently  rings  its 
changes,  irresistibly  funny  as  symbolic  of  cheap  bluster. 
Whole  sentences  are  often  reiterated  by  Arnold  in  this 
same  satirical  fashion.  In  the  course  of  a  somewhat 
atrabilious  criticism  he  had  been  attacked  by  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  as  being  a  mere  dilettante  and  as 
having  "  no  philosophy  with  coherent,  interdependent, 
subordinate,  and  derivative  principles."  2  This  latter 
phrase,  with  its  bristling  array  of  epithets,  struck  Arnold 
as  delightfully  redolent  of  pedantry ;  and,  as  has  already 
been  noted,  it  recurs  again  and  again  in  his  writings  in 
passages  of  mock  apology  and  ironical  self-deprecia- 
tion. Readers  of  Literature  and  Science,  too,  will  re- 
member how  amusingly  Arnold  plays  with  "  Mr. 
Darwin's  famous  proposition  that  '  our  ancestor  was 
a  hairy  quadruped  furnished  with  a  tail  and  pointed 
ears,  probably  arboreal  in  his  habits.'  " 3  It  should 
be  noted  that  in  all  these  cases  the  phrase  that  is 
reiterated  has  a  symbolic  quality,  and  therefore,  in 
addition  to  its  delicious  absurdity,  comes  to  possess 
a  subtly  argumentative  value. 

Akin   to  Arnold's  skillful  use  of  reiteration   is  his 
ingenuity  in  the  invention  of  telling  nicknames.     His 


1  Friendship 's  Garland,  ed.  1883,  p.  285. 

2  Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed.  1883,  p.  56. 

3 Discourses  in  America,  ed.  1894,  p.  no. 


INTRODUCTION.  Ixxiii 

classification  of  his  fellow-countrymen  as  Barbarians, 
Philistines,  a-nd  Populace  has  become  common  prop- 
erty. The  Nonconformist  because  of  his  unyielding 
sectarianism  he  compares  to  Ephraim,  "  a  wild  ass 
alone  by  himself."  '  To  Professor  Huxley,  who  has 
been  talking  of  "  the  Levites  of  culture,"  Arnold  sug- 
gests that  "  the  poor  humanist  is  sometimes  apt  to 
regard  "  men  of  science  as  the  "  Nebuchadnezzars  " 
of  culture.  The  Church  and  State  Review  Arnold 
dubs  "the  High  Church  rhinoceros";  the  Record is 
"  the  Evangelical  hyena."  2 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  often  Arnold's  satire 
has  a  biblical  turn.  His  mind  is  saturated  with 
Bible  history  and  his  memory  stored  with  biblical 
phraseology  ;  moreover,  allusions  whether  to  the  inci- 
dents or  the  language  of  the  Bible  are  sure  to  be  quickly 
caught  by  English  readers  ;  hence  Arnold  frequently 
gives  point  to  his  style  through  the  use  of  scriptural 
phrases  or  illustrations.  Many  of  the  foregoing  nick- 
names come  from  biblical  sources.  The  lectures  on 
Homer  offer  one  admirable  instances  of  Scripture  quo- 
tation. Arnold  has  been  urged  to  define  the  grand 
style.  With  his  customary  dislike  of  abstractions,  he 
protests  against  the  demand.  "  Alas!  the  grand  style 
is  the  last  matter  in  the  world  for  verbal  definition  to 
deal  with  adequately.  One  may  say  of  it  as  is  said  of 
faith:  'One  must  feel  it  in  order  to  know  what  it  is.' 
But,  as  of  faith,  so  too  we  may  say  of  nobleness,  of 
the  grand  style:  '  Woe  to  those  who  know  it  not  !  ' 
yet  this  expression,  though  indefinable,  has  a  charm; 

1  Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed.  1883,  p.  xxxviii. 

2  Selections,  p.  28. 


lxxiv  INTRODUCTION. 

one  is  the  better  for  considering  it;  bo  mint  est,  nos  hie 
esse;  nay,  one  loves  to  try  to  explain  it,  though  one 
knows  that  one  must  speak  imperfectly.  For  those, 
then,  who  ask  the  question,  What  is  the  grand  style? 
with  sincerity,  I  will  try  to  make  some  answer,  inade- 
quate as  it  must  be.  For  those  who  ask  it  mockingly 
I  have  no  answer,  except  to  repeat  to  them,  with  com- 
passionate sorrow,  the  Gospel  words:  Moriemini  in 
peccatis  vestris,  Ye  shall  die  in  your  sins."  * 

An  interesting  comment  on  this  habit  of  Arnold's 
of  scriptural  phrasing  occurs  in  one  of  his  letters: 
"  The  Bible,"  he  says,  "  is  the  only  book  well  enough 
known  to  quote  as  the  Greeks  quoted  Homer,  sure 
that  the  quotation  would  go  home  to  every  reader, 
and  it  is  quite  astonishing  how  a  Bible  sentence 
clinches  and  sums  up  an  argument.  'Where  the 
State's  treasure  is  bestowed,'  etc.,  for  example,  saved 
me  at  least  half  a  column  of  disquisition." 2  A 
moment  later  he  adds  a  charmingly  characteristic 
explanation  as  regards  his  incidental  use  of  Scripture 
texts:  "I  put  it  in  the  Vulgate  Latin,  as  I  always  do 
when  I  am  not  earnestly  serious."  This  habit  of 
"  high  seriousness  "  in  such  matters,  it  is  to  be  feared 
he  in  some  measure  outgrew. 

Arnold's  fine  instinct  in  the  choice  of  words  has 
thus  far  been  illustrated  chiefly  as  subservient  to 
satire.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  it  is  subject  to 
no  such  limitation.  Whatever  his  purpose,  he  has 
in  a  high  degree  the  faculty  of  putting  words  to- 
gether  with   a   delicate  congruity  that  gives  them  a 

1  Selections,  p.  83.  2  Letters,  i.  191. 


IN  TROD  UC  TION.  lxxv 

permanent  hold  on  the  imagination.  In  this  power  of 
fashioning  memorable  phrases  he  far  surpasses  New- 
man, and  indeed  most  recent  writers  except  those 
who  have  developed  epigram  and  paradox  into  a 
meretricious  manner.  "A  free  play  of  the  mind;" 
"disinterestedness;"  "a  current  of  true  and  fresh 
ideas;"  "  the  note  of  provinciality;"  "sweet  reason- 
ableness;" "the  method  of  inwardness;"  "  the  secret 
of  Jesus;  "  "  the  study  of  perfection;  "  "  the  power  of 
conduct,  the  power  of  intellect  and  knowledge,  the 
power  of  beauty,  and  the  power  of  social  life  and 
manners" — how  happily  vital  are  all  these  phrases! 
How  perfectly  integrated!  Yet  they  are  unelaborate 
and  almost  obvious.  Christianity  is  "  the  greatest  and 
happiest  stroke  ever  yet  made  for  human  perfection." 
"  Burke  saturates  politics  with  thought."  "Our 
august  Constitution  sometimes  looks  ...  a  colossal 
machine  for  the  manufacture  of  Philistines."  "  Eng- 
lish public  life  .  .  .  that  Thyestean  banquet  of  clap- 
trap." The  Atlantic  cable — "  that  great  rope,  with  a 
Philistine  at  each  end  of  it  talking  inutilities."  These 
sentences  illustrate  still  further  Arnold's  deftness  of 
phrasing.  But  with  the  last  two  or  three  we  return  to 
the  ironical  manner  that  has  already  been  exemplified. 
In  his  use  of  figures  Arnold  is  sparing;  similes  are 
few,  metaphors  by  no  means  frequent.  It  may  be 
questioned  whether  it  is  ever  the  case  with  Arnold  as 
with  Newman  that  a  whole  paragraph  is  subtly  con- 
trolled in  its  phrasing  by  the  presence  of  a  single 
figure  in  the  author's  mind.  Simpler  in  this  respect 
Arnold's  style  probably  is  than  even  Newman's;  its 
general  inferiority  to  Newman's  style  in  point  of  sim- 


Jxxvi  INTRODUCTION. 

plicity  is  owing  to  the  infelicities  of  tone  and  manner 
that  have  already  been  noted. 

Illustrations  Arnold  uses  liberally  and  happily.  He 
excels  in  drawing  them  patly  from  current  events  and 
the  daily  prints.  This  increases  both  the  actuality  of 
his  discussion — its  immediacy — and  its  appearance 
of  casualness,  of  being  a  pleasantly  unconsidered  trifle. 
For  example,  the  long  and  elaborate  discussion,  Cul- 
ture and  Anarchy,  begins  with  an  allusion  to  a  recent 
article  in  the  Quarterly  Review  on  Sainte-Beuve,  and 
turns  over  and  over  the  use  of  the  word  curiosity  that 
occurs  in  that  article.  Arnold  is  thus  led  to  his 
analysis  of  culture.  Later  in  the  same  chapter,  refer- 
ences occur  to  such  sectarian  journals  as  the  Non- 
conformist, and  to  current  events  as  reported  and 
criticised  in  their  columns.  Even  in  essays  dealing 
with  purely  literary  topics — in  such  an  essay  as  that 
on  Eugenie  de  Gue'rin — there  is  this  same  actuality. 
"  While  I  was  reading  the  journal  of  Mdlle.  de 
Guerin,"  Arnold  tells  us,  "there  came  into  my  hands 
the  memoir  and  poems  of  a  young  Englishwoman,  Miss 
Emma  Tatham";  and  then  he  uses  this  memoir  to 
illustrate  the  contrasts  between  the  poetic  traditions 
of  Romanism  and  the  somewhat  sordid  intellectual 
poetry  of  English  sectarian  life.  This  closeness  of 
relation  between  Arnold's  writing  and  his  daily  expe- 
rience is  very  noticeable  and  increases  the  reader's 
sense  of  the  novelty  and  genuineness  and  immediacy 
of  what  he  reads;  it  conduces  to  that  impression  of 
vitality  that  is  perhaps,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  most 
characteristic  impression  the  reader  carries  away  from 
Arnold's  writings. 


INTRODUCTION.  lxxvii 


VIII. 

And  indeed  the  union  in  Arnold's  style  of  actuality 
with  distinction  becomes  a  very  significant  matter 
when  we  turn  to  consider  his  precise  relation  to  his 
age,  for  it  suggests  what  is  perhaps  the  most  striking 
characteristic  of  his  personality — his  reconciliation  of 
conventionality  with  fineness  of  spiritual  temper.  In 
this  reconciliation  lies  the  secret  of  Arnold's  relation 
to  his  romantic  predecessors  and  to  the  men  of  his 
own  time.  He  accepts  the  actual,  conventional  life 
of  the  everyday  world  frankly  and  fully,  as  the  earlier 
idealists  had  never  quite  done,  and  yet  he  retains  a 
strain  of  other-worldliness  inherited  from  the  dreamers 
of  former  generations.  Arnold's  gospel  of  culture  is 
an  attempt  to  import  into  actual  life  something  of  the 
fine  spiritual  fervor  of  the  Romanticists  with  none  of 
the  extravagance  or  the  remoteness  from  fact  of  those 
"  madmen  " — those  idealists  of  an  earlier  age. 

Like  the  Romanticists,  Arnold  really  gives  to  the 
imagination  and  the  emotions  the  primacy  in  life  ;  like 
the  Romanticists  he  contends  against  formalists,  sys- 
tem-makers, and  all  devotees  of  abstractions.  It  is  by 
an  exquisite  tact,  rather  than  by  logic,  that  Arnold  in 
all  doubtful  matters  decides  between  good  and  evil. 
He  keeps  to  the  concrete  image  ;  he  is  an  appreciator 
of  life,  not  a  deducer  of  formulas  or  a  demonstrator. 
He  is  continually  concerned  about  what  ought  to  be  ; 
he  is  not  cynically  content  with  the  knowledge  of 
what  is.  And  yet,  unlike  the  Romanticists,  Arnold  is 
in  the  world,   and  of  it ;  he  has  given  heed  to  the 


Ixxviii  INTRODUCTION. 

world-spirit's  warning,  "submit,  submit",  he  ha£ 
"  learned  the  Second  Reverence,  for  things  cround." 
In  Arnold,  imaginative  literature  returns  from  its  ro- 
mantic quest  for  the  Holy  Grail  and  betakes  itself 
half-humorously,  and  yet  with  now  and  then  traces  of 
the  old  fervor,  to  the  homely  duties  of  everyday  life. 

Arnold  had  in  his  youth  been  under  the  spell  of 
romantic  poetry  ;  he  had  heard  the  echoes  of  "  the 
puissant  hail  "  of  those  "  former  men,"  whose  "  voices 
were  in  all  men's  ears."  Indeed,  much  of  his  poetry 
is  essentially  a  beautiful  threnody  over  the  waning 
of  romance,  and  in  its  tenor  bears  witness  alike 
to  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  had  been  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  the  earlier  idealists  and  to  his  ina- 
bility to  rest  content  with  their  relation  to  life  and 
their  accounts  of  it.  It  is  the  unreality  of  the  ideal- 
ists that  dissatisfies  Arnold  ;  their  visionary  blindness 
to  fact;  their  morbid  distaste  for  the  actual.  Much 
as  he  delights  in  the  poetry  of  Shelley  and  Coleridge, 
these  qualities  in  their  work  seem  to  him  unsound  and 
injurious.  Or  at  other  times  it  is  the  capricious  self- 
will  of  the  Romanticists,  their  impotent  isolation,  their 
enormous  egoism  that  impress  him  as  fatally  wrong. 
Even  in  Wordsworth  he  is  troubled  by  a  semi-untruth 
and  by  the  lack  of  a  courageous  acceptance  of  the 
conditions  of  human  life.     Wordsworth's 


"  Eyes  avert  their  ken 

From  half  of  human  fate." 


Tempered,  then,  as  Arnold  was  by  a  deep  sense  of 
the  beauty  and  nobleness   of  romantic   and  idealistic 


INTRODUCTION.  Ixxix 

poetry,  finely  touched  as  he  was  into  sympathy  with 
the  whole  range  of  delicate  intuitions,  quivering 
sensibilities,  and  half-mystical  aspirations  that  this 
poetry  called  into  play,  he  yet  came  to  regard  its  un- 
derlying conceptions  of  life  as  inadequate  and  mis- 
leading, and  to  feel  the  need  of  supplementing  them  by 
a  surer  and  saner  relation  to  the  conventional  world  of 
common  sense.  The  Romanticists  lamented  that 
"the  world  is  too  much  with  us."  Arnold  shared 
their  dislike  of  the  world  of  dull  routine,  their  fear  of 
the  world  that  enslaves  to  petty  cares  ;  yet  he  came 
more  and  more  to  distinguish  between  this  world  and 
the  great  world  of  common  experience,  spread  out 
generously  in  the  lives  of  all  men  ;  more  and  more 
clearly  he  realized  that  the  true  land  of  romance  is  in 
this  region  of  everyday  fact,  or  else  is  a  mere  mirage ; 
that  "America  is  here  or  nowhere." 

Arnold,  then,  sought  to  correct  the  febrile  unreality 
of  the  idealists  by  restoring  to  men  a  true  sense  of  the 
actual  values  of  life.  In  this  attempt  he  had  recourse  to 
Hellenic  conceptions  with  their  sanity,  their  firm  de- 
light in  the  tangible  and  the  visible,  their  regard  for 
proportion  and  symmetry — and  more  particularly  to 
the  Hellenism  of  Goethe.  Indeed,  Goethe  may  justly 
be  called  Arnold's  master — the  writer  who  had  the 
largest  share  in  determining  the  characteristic  prin- 
ciples in  his  theory  of  life.  Goethe's  formula  for  the 
ideal  life — Im  Ganzen,  Guten,  Wahren,  resolut  zu  leben 
— sums  up  in  a  phrase  the  plea  for  perfection,  for 
totality,  for  wisely  balanced  self-culture  that  Arnold 
is  continually  making  throughout  so  many  of  his 
essays  and  books. 


lxxx  INTRODUCTION. 

Allusions  to  Goethe  abound  in  Arnold's  essays,  and 
in  one  of  his  letters  he  speaks  particularly  of  his  close 
and  extended  reading  of  Goethe's  works.'  His  splen- 
did poetic  tributes  to  Goethe,  in  his  Memorial  Verses 
and  Obermann,  have  given  enduring  expression  to  his 
admiration  for  Goethe's  sanity, insight,  and  serene  cour- 
age. His  frankest  prose  appreciation  of  Goethe  occurs 
in  A  French  Critic  on  Goethe,  where  he  characterizes  him 
as  "  the  clearest,  the  largest,  the  most  helpful  thinker 
of  modern  times";  .  .  .  "in  the  width,  depth,  and 
richness  of  his  criticism  of  life,  by  far  our  greatest 
modern  man."3  It  is  precisely  in  this  matter  of  the 
criticism  of  life  that  Arnold  took  Goethe  for  master. 
Goethe,  as  Arnold  saw,  had  passed  through  the  tem- 
pering experiences  of  Romanticism  ;  he  had  rebelled 
against  the  limitations  of  actual  life  (in  Werther,  for 
example,  and  Goetz)  and  sought  passionately  for  the 
realization  of  romantic  dreams  ;  and  he  had  finally 
come  to  admit  the  futility  of  rebellion  and  to  recognize 
the  treacherous  evasiveness  of  emotional  ideals  ;  he 
had  learned  the  "  Second  Reverence,  for  things 
around."  He  had  found  in  self-development,  in  wise 
self-discipline  for  the  good  of  society,  the  secret  of  suc- 
cessful living.  Arnold's  gospel  of  culture  is  largely 
a  translation  of  Goethe's  doctrine  into  the  idiom  of 
the  later  years  of  the  century,  and  the  minute  adapta- 
tion of  it  to  the  special  needs  of  Englishmen.  There 
is  in  Arnold  somewhat  less  sleek  Paganism  than  in 
Goethe — a  somewhat  more  genuine  spiritual  quality. 
But  the  wise  limitation  of  the  scope    of    human  en- 

1  Letters,  ii.  165.  2  Mixed  Essays,  pp.  233-234. 


INTRODUCTION.  lxxxi 

deavor  to  this  world  is  the  same  with  both  ;  so,  too,  is 
the  sane  and  uncomplaining  acceptance  of  fact  and 
the  concentration  of  all  thought  and  effort  on  the  pur- 
suit of  tangible  ideals  of  human  perfection.  Goethe 
tempered  by  Wordsworth — this  is  not  an  unfair  ac- 
count of  the  derivation  of  Arnold's  ideal. 

From  one  point  of  view,  then,  Arnold  may  fairly 
enough  be  called  the  special  advocate  of  convention- 
ality. He  recommends  and  practices  conformity  to 
the  demands  of  conventional  life.  He  has  none  of 
the  pose  or  the  mannerisms  of  the  seer  or  the  bard;  he 
is  even  a  frequenter  of  drawing  rooms  and  a  diner-out, 
and  is  fairly  adept  in  the  dialect  and  mental  idiom  of 
the  frivolously-minded.  In  all  that  he  writes,  "  he 
delivers  himself,"  as  the  heroine  in  Peacock's  novel 
urged  Scythrop  (Shelley)  to  do,  "  like  a  man  of  this 
world."  He  pretends  to  no  transcendental  second- 
sight  and  indulges  in  none  of  Carlyle's  spinning- 
dervish  jargon.  He  is  never  guilty  of  Ruskin's  occa- 
sional false  sentiment  or  falsetto  rhetoric.  The  world 
that  he  lives  in  is  the  world  that  exists  in  the  minds  and 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  most  sensible  and  culti- 
vated people  who  make  up  modern  society;  the  world 
over  which,  as  its  presiding  genius,  broods  the  haunt- 
ing presence  of  Mr.  George  Meredith's  Comic  Spirit. 
It  is  "  in  this  world "  that  "  he  has  hope,"  in  its 
ever  greater  refinement,  in  its  ever  greater  compre- 
hensiveness, in  its  increasing  ability  to  impose 
its  standards  on  others.  When  he  half  pleads  for 
an  English  Academy — he  never  quite  pleads  for 
one — he  does  this  because  of  his  desire  for  some 
organ  by  which,  in  art  and  literature,  the  collective 


lxxxii  INTRODUCTION. 

sense  of  the  best  minds  in  society  assembled  may 
make  itself  effective.  So,  too,  when  he  pleads  for  the 
Established  Church  he  does  this  for  similar  reasons  ; 
he  is  convinced  that  it  offers  by  far  the  best  means  for 
imposing  widely  upon  the  nation,  as  a  standard  of 
religious  experience,  what  is  most  spiritual  in  the 
lives  and  aspirations  of  the  greatest  number  of  culti- 
vated people.  In  many  such  ways  as  these,  then, 
Matthew  Arnold's  kingdom  is  a  kingdom  of  this 
world. 

And  yet,  after  all,  Arnold  "  wears  "  his  worldliness 
"  with  a"  very  great  "difference."  If  he  be  compared, 
for  example,  with  other  literary  men  of  the  world, — 
with  Francis  Jeffrey  or  Lord  Macaulay  or  Lockhart, — 
there  is  at  once  obvious  in  him  an  all-pervasive 
quality  that  marks  his  temper  as  far  subtler  and  finer 
than  theirs.  His  worldliness  is  a  worldliness  of  his 
own,  "  compounded  "  out  of  many  exquisite  "simples." 
His  faith  in  poetry  is  intense  and  absolute  ;  "  the 
future  of  poetry,"  he  declares,  "  is  immense,  because 
in  poetry,  where  it  is  worthy  of  its  high  destinies,  our 
race,  as  time  goes  on,  will  find  an  ever  surer  and 
surer  stay."  This  declaration  contrasts  strikingly 
with  Macaulay's  pessimistic  theory  of  the  essentially 
make-believe  character  of  poetry — a  theory  that  puts 
it  on  a  level  with  children's  games,  and,  like  the 
still  more  puerile  theory  of  Herr  Max  Nordau,  looks 
forward  to  its  extinction  as  the  race  reaches  genuine 
maturity.  Poetry  always  remains  for  Arnold  the  most 
adequate  and  beautiful  mode  of  speech  possible  to 
man  ;  and  this  faith,  which  runs  implicitly  through  all 
his  writing,  is  plainly  the  outcome  of  a  mood  very 


INTRODUCTION.  lxxxiii 

different  from  that  of  the  ordinary  man  of  the  world, 
and  is  the  expression  of  an  emotional  refinement  and 
a  spiritual  sensitiveness  that  are,  at  least  in  part,  his 
abiding  inheritance  from  the  Romanticists.  This  faith 
is  the  manifestation  of  the  ideal  element  in  his  nature, 
which,  in  spite  of  the  plausible  man-of-the-world 
aspect  and  tone  of  much  of  his  prose,  makes  itself  felt 
even  in  his  prose  as  the  inspirer  of  a  kind  of  "  divine 
unrest." 

In  his  Preface  to  his  first  series  of  Essays  Arnold 
playfully  takes  to  himself  the  name  transcendentalist. 
To  the  stricter  sect  of  the  transcendentalists  he  can 
hardly  pretend  to  belong.  He  certainly  has  none  of 
their  delight  in  envisaging  mystery  ;  none  of  their 
morbid  relish  for  an  "  O  altitudo  !  "  provided  only  the 
altitude  be  wrapped  in  clouds.  He  believes,  to  be 
sure,  in  a  "power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for 
righteousness  ";  but  his  interest  in  this  power  and  his 
comments  upon  it  confine  themselves  almost  wholly  to 
its  plain  and  palpable  influence  upon  human  conduct. 
Even  in  his  poetry  he  can  hardly  be  rated  as  more 
than  a  transcendentalist  manque";  and  in  his  prose  he 
is  never  so  aware  of  the  unseen  as  in  his  poetry. 

Yet,  whether  or  no  he  be  strictly  a  transcendentalist, 
Arnold  is,  in  Disraeli's  famous  phrase,  "  on  the  side  of 
the  angels  ";  he  is  a  persistent  and  ingenious  opponent 
of  purely  materialistic  or  utilitarian  conceptions  of 
life.  "The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you"  ;  this  is 
a  cardinal  point  in  the  doctrine  of  Culture.  The 
highest  good,  that  for  which  every  man  should  con- 
tinually be  striving,  is  an  inner  state  of  perfection  ; 
material    prosperity,    political    enactments,    religious 


lxxxiv  INTRODUCTION. 

organizations — all  these  things  are  to  be  judged  solely 
according  to  their  furtherance  of  the  spiritual  well- 
being  of  the  individual ;  they  are  all  mere  machinery — 
more  or  less  ingenious  means  for  giving  to  every  man 
a  chance  to  make  the  most  of  his  life.  The  true 
"ideal  of  human  perfection  "  is  "an  inward  spiritual 
activity,  having  for  its  characters  increased  sweetness, 
increased  light,  increased  life,  increased  sympathy."  ' 
Arnold's  worldliness,  then,  is  a  worldliness  that  holds 
many  of  the  elements  of  idealism  in  solution,  that  has 
none  of  the  cynical  acquiescence  of  unmitigated 
worldliness,  that  throughout  all  its  range  shows  the 
gentle  urgency  of  a  fine  discontent  with  fact. 

To  realize  the  subtle  and  high  quality  of  Arnold's 
genius,  one  has  but  to  compare  him  with  men  of 
science  or  with  rationalists  pure  and  simple, — with 
men  like  Professor  Huxley,  Darwin,  or  Bentham. 
Their  carefulness  for  truth,  their  intellectual  strength, 
their  vast  services  to  mankind  are  acknowledged  even 
by  their  opponents.  Yet  Arnold  has  a  far  wider 
range  of  sensibilities  than  any  one  of  them  ;  life  plays 
upon  him  in  far  richer  and  more  various  ways  ;  it 
touches  him  into  response  through  associations  that 
have  a  more  distinctively  human  character,  and  that 
have  a  deeper  and  a  warmer  color  of  emotion  drawn 
out  of  the  past  of  the  race.  In  short,  Arnold  brings 
to  bear  upon  the  present  a  finer  spiritual  apprecia- 
tion than  the  mere  man  of  the  world  or  the  mere  man 
of  science — a  larger  accumulation  of  imaginative  ex- 
perience. Through  this  temperamental  scope  and 
refinement  he  is   able,   while   accepting  conventional 

1  Selections,  i.  172. 


INTRODUCTION.  lxxxv 

and  actual  life,  to  redeem  it  in  some  measure  from 
its  routine  and  its  commonplace  character,  and  to 
import  into  it  beauty  and  meaning  and  good  from 
beyond  the  range  of  science  or  positive  truth.  All 
this  comes  from  the  fact  that,  despite  his  worldly  con- 
formity, he  has  the  romantic  ferment  in  his  blood. 
If  his  conformity  be  compared  with  that  of  the 
eighteenth  century, — with  the  worldliness  of  Swift  or 
Addison. — the  enormous  value  of  'the  romantic  incre- 
ment cannot  be  missed. 

Finally,  Arnold  makes  of  life  an  art  rather  than  a 
science,  and  commits  the  conduct  of  it  to  an  exquisite 
tact,  rather  than  to  reason  or  demonstration.  The 
imaginative  assimilation  of  all  the  best  experience  of 
the  past — this  he  regards  as  the  right  training  to  de- 
velop true  tact  for  the  discernment  of  good  and  evil 
in  all  practical  matters,  where  probability  must  be  the 
guide  of  life.  We  are  at  once  reminded  of  Newman's 
Illative  Sense,  which  was  also  an  intuitive  faculty  for 
the  dextrous  apprehension  of  truth  through  the  aid  of 
the  feelings  and  the  imagination.  But  Arnold's  new 
Sense  comes  much  nearer  than  Newman's  to  being  a 
genuinely  sublimated  Common  Sense.  Arnold's  own 
flair  in  matters  of  art  and  life  was  astonishingly 
keen,  and  yet  he  would  have  been  the  last  to  exalt  it 
as  unerring.  His  faith  is  ultimately  in  the  best  in- 
stincts of  the  so-called  remnant — in  the  collective 
sense  of  the  most  cultivated,  most  delicately  percep- 
tive, most  spiritually-minded  people  of  the  world. 
Through  the  combined  intuitions  of  such  men 
sincerely  aiming  at  perfection,  truth  in  all  that  per- 
tains to  the  conduct  of  life  will   be   more   and    more 


Ixxxvi  introduction: 

nearly  won.  Because  of  this  faith  of  his  in  sublimated 
worldly  wisdom,  Arnold,  unlike  Newman,  is  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  Zeitgeist  of  a  democratic  age. 

And  indeed  here  seems  to  rest  Arnold's  really  most 
permanent  claim  to  gratitude  and  honor.  He  accepts — 
with  some  sadness,  it  is  true,  and  yet  genuinely  and 
generously — the  modern  age,  with  its  scientific  bias 
and  its  worldly  preoccupations  ;  humanist  as  he  is,  half- 
romantic  lover  of  an  elder  time,  he  yet  masters  his 
regret  over  what  is  disappearing  and  welcomes  the 
present  loyally.  Believing,  however,  in  the  continuity 
of  human  experience,  and  above  all  in  the  transcendent 
worth  to  mankind  of  its  spiritual  acquisitions,  won 
largely  through  the  past  domination  of  Christian 
ideals,  he  devotes  himself  to  preserving  the  quint- 
essence of  this  ideal  life  of  former  generations,  and 
insinuating  it  into  the  hearts  and  imaginations  of 
men  of  a  ruder  age.  He  converts  himself  into  a 
patient,  courageous  mediator  between  the  old  and 
the  new.  Herein  he  contrasts  with  Newman  on 
the  one  hand,  and  with  the  modern  devotees  of 
aestheticism  on  the  other  hand.  In  the  case  of 
Newman,  a  delicately  spiritual  temperament,  subdued 
even  more  deeply  than  Arnold's  to  Romanticism, 
shrunk  before  the  immediacy  and  apparent  anar- 
chy of  modern  life,  and  sought  to  realize  its  spir- 
itual ideals  through  the  aid  of  mediaeval  formulas 
and  a  return  to  mediaeval  conceptions  and  standards 
of  truth.  Exquisite  spirituality  was  attained,  but  at 
the  cost  of  what  some  have  called  the  Great  Refusal. 
A  like  imperfect  synthesis  is  characteristic  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  art  for  art's  sake.     They,  too,  give  up  com- 


INTRODUCTION.  lxxxvii 

mon  life  as  irredeemably  crass,  as  unmalleable, 
irreducible  to  terms  of  the  ideal.  They  turn  for 
consolation  to  their  own  dreams,  and  frame  for 
themselves  a  House  Beautiful,  where  they  may  let 
these  dreams  have  their  way,  "  far  from  the  world's 
noise,"  and  "  life's  confederate  plea."  Arnold,  with  a 
temperament  perhaps  as  exacting  as  either  of  these 
other  temperaments,  takes  life  as  it  offers  itself  and 
does  his  best  with  it.  He  sees  and  feels  its  crude- 
ness  and  disorderliness  ;  but  he  has  faith  in  the 
instincts  that  civilized  men  have  developed  in  com- 
mon, and  finds  in  the  working  of  these  instincts  the 
continuous,  if  irregular,  realization  of  the  ideal. 


DATES  IN  ARNOLD'S  LIFE. 


1822.  Born  at  Laleham  near  Staines  ;  son  of  Dr.  Thomas  Arnolc 

of  Rugby. 
18.11.   Matriculated  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

1843.  Wins  the  Newdigate  prize  for  English  verse. 

1844.  Graduated  in  honors. 

1845.  Elected  Fellow  of  Oriel  College,  Oxford. 
1847-51.   Private  Secretary  of  Lord  Lansdowne. 
1 85 1.  Appointed  Lay  Inspector  of  Schools. 
1857-67.   Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford. 

1870.   Receives  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  from  Oxford. 

1S83-84.  Lectures  in  America. 

1886.   Resigns  his  post  as  Inspector  of  Schools. 

1888.   Death  of  Arnold. 

— From  Men  of  the  Time,  ed.  1887 


lxxxix 


BIBLIOGRAPHY." 


WORKS  OF   ARNOLD. 

1849.  The  Strayed  Reveler. 

1852.  Empedocles  on  Etna. 

1853.  Poems. 

1855.  Poems.     Second  Series. 

1858.  Merope. 

1861.  Popular  Education  in  France. 

1861.  On  Translating  Homer. 

1864.  A  French  Eton. 

1865.  Essays  in  Criticism. 

1867.  On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature. 

1867.  New  Poems. 

1868.  Schools  and  Universities  on  the  Continent. 

1869.  Culture  and  Anarchy. 

1870.  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism. 

1871.  Friendship's  Garland. 
1873.  Literature  and  Dogma. 
1875.  God  and  the  Bible. 

I877.  Last  Essays  on  Church  and  Religion. 

1879.  Mixed  Essays. 

1882.  Irish  Essays. 

1885.  Discourses  in  America. 

1888.  Essays  in  Criticism.     Second  Series. 

1888.  Civilization  in  the  United  States. 

*  For  a  complete  list  of  Arnold's  writings  in  prose  and  poetry, 

and  of  writings  about  Arnold,  see  the  admirable  Bibliography  0/ 
Matthew  Arnold  by  T.  B.  Smart,  London,  1852. 


SELECTIONS.      , ,  -  «,  <^0„ 


Gbe  Junction  of  Criticism  at  the  present  Gfme. 

Many  objections  have  been  made  to  a  proposition 
which,  in  some  remarks  of  mine  on  translating  Homer, 
Iventured  to  put  forth;  a  proposition  about  criticism, 
and  its  importance  at  the  present  day.  I  said  :  "  Of 
5  the  literature  of  France  and  Germany,  as  of  the 
intellect  of  Europe  in  general,  the  main  effort,  for 
now  many  years,  has  been  a  critical  effort  ;  the 
endeavour,  in  all  branches  of  knowledge,  theology, 
philosophy,  history,  art,  science,  to  see  the  object  as 

10  in  itself  it  really  is."  I  added,  that  owing  to  the 
operation  in  English  literature  of  certain  causes, 
"  almost  the  last  thing  for  which  one  would  come  to 
English  literature  is  just  that  very  thing  which  now 
Europe  most  desires, — criticism";  and  that  the  power 

15  and  value  of  English  literature  was  thereby  impaired. 
More  than  one  rejoinder  declared  that  the  importance 
I  here  assigned  to  criticism  was  excessive,  and 
asserted  the  inherent  superiority  of  the  creative  effort 
of  the  human  spirit  over  its  critical  effort.     And  the 

20  other  day,  having  been  led  by  a  Mr.  Shairp's  excellent 
notice  of  Wordsworth  '  to  turn  again  to  his  biography, 

1  I   cannot  help  thinking  that  a  practice,   common  in  England 
during  the  last  century,  and  still  followed  in  France,  of  printing  a 


2  THE  FUNCTION  OF   CRITICISM 

I  found,  in  the  words  of  this  great  man,  whom  I,  for 
one,  must  always  listen  to  with  the  profoundest  re- 
spect, a  sentence  passed  on  the  critic's  business,  which 
seems  to  justify  every  possible  disparagement  of  it. 
Wordsworth  says  in  one  of  his  letters: —  5 

"  The  writers  in  these  publications  "  (the  Reviews), 
"  while  they  prosecute  their  inglorious  employment, 
cannot  be  supposed  to  be  in  a  st.ue  of  mind  very 
favourable  for  being  affected  by  the  finer  influences  of 
a  thing  so  pure  as  genuine  poetry."  10 

And  a  trustworthy  reporter  of  his  conversation 
quotes  a  more  elaborate  judgment  to  the  same  effect: — 

"  Wordsworth  holds  the  critical  power  very  low,  in- 
finitely lower  than  the  inventive  ;  and  he  said  to-day 
that  if  the  quantity  of  time  consumed  in  writing  crit- 15 
iques  on  the  works  of  others  were  given  to  original 
composition,  of  whatever  kind  it  might  be,  it  would 
be  much  better  employed  ;  it  would  make  a  man  find 
out  sooner  his  own  level,  and  it  would  do  infinitely 
less  mischief.  A  false  or  malicious  criticism  may  do  20 
much  injury  to  the  minds  of  others,  a  stupid  inven- 
tion, either  in  prose  or  verse,  is  quite  harmless." 

It  is  almost  too  much  to  expect  of  poor  human 
nature,  that  a  man  capable  of  producing  some  effect 

notice  of  this  kind, — a  notice  by  a  competent  critic, — to  serve  as 
an  introduction  to  an  eminent  author's  works,  might  be  revived 
among  us  with  advantage.  To  introduce  all  succeeding  editions 
of  Wordsworth,  Mr.  Shairp's  notice  might,  it  seems  to  me, 
excellently  serve  ;  it  is  written  from  the  point  of  view  of  an 
admirer,  nay,  of  a  disciple,  and  that  is  right  ;  but  then  the  disciple 
must  be  also,  as  in  this  case  he  is,  a  critic,  a  man  of  letters,  not, 
as  too  often  happens,  some  relation  or  friend  with  no  qualification 
for  his  task  except  affection  for  his  author. 


AT   THE  PRESENT   TIME.  3 

in  one  line  of  literature,  should,  for  the  greater  good 
of  society,  voluntarily  doom  himself  to  impotence  and 
obscurity  in  another.  Still  less  is  this  to  be  expected 
from  men  addicted  to  the  composition  of  the  "  false 
5  or  malicious  criticism  "  of  which  Wordsworth  speaks. 
However,  everybody  would  admit  that  a  false  or 
malicious  criticism  had  better  never  have  been  written. 
Everybody,  too,  would  be  willing  to  admit,  as  a  general 
proposition,    that  the  critical   faculty    is    lower    than 

iothe  inventive.  But  is  it  true  that  criticism  is  really, 
in  itself,  a  baneful  and  injurious  employment  ;  is  it 
true  that  all  time  given  to  writing  critiques  on  the 
works  of  others  would  be  much  better  employed  if  it 
were    given    to    original    composition,    of    whatever 

15  kind  this  may  be  ?  Is  it  true  that  Johnson  had  better 
have  gone  on  producing  more  Irenes  instead  of  writ- 
ing his  Lives  of  the  Poets;  nay,  is  it  certain  that 
Wordsworth  himself  was  better  employed  in  making 
his   Ecclesiastical  Sonnets   than   when   he   made   his 

20  celebrated  Preface,  so  full  of  criticism,  and  criticism 
of  the  works  of  others  ?  Wordsworth  was  himself 
a  great  critic,  and  it  is  to  be  sincerely  regretted  that 
he  has  not  left  us  more  criticism  ;  Goethe  was  one  of 
the  greatest  of  critics,  and  we  may  sincerely  congratu- 

25  late  ourselves  that  he  has  left  us  so  much  criticism. 
Without  wasting  time  over  the  exaggeration  which 
Wordsworth's  judgment  on  criticism  clearly  contains, 
or  over  an  attempt  to  trace  the  causes, — not  difficult, 
I  think,  to  be  traced, — which  may  have  led  Words- 

30  worth  to  this  exaggeration,  a  critic  may  with  advan- 
tage seize  an  occasion  for  trying  his  own  conscience, 
and  for  asking  himself  of  what  real  service    at   any 


4  THE  FUNCTION  OF   CRITICISM 

given  moment  the  practice  of  criticism  either  is  or 
may  be  made  to  his  own  mind  and  spirit,  and  to  the 
minds  and  spirits  of  others. 

The  critical  power  is  of  lower  rank  than  the  crea- 
tive.    True  ;  but  in  assenting  to  this  proposition,  one  5 
or  two  things  are  to  be  kept  in  mind.     It  is  undeni- 
able that  the  exercise  of  a  creative  power,  that  a  free 
creative  activity,  is  the  highest  function  of  man  ;  it  is 
proved  to  be  so  by  man's  finding  in  it  his  true  happi- 
ness.   But  it  is  undeniable,  also,  that  men  may  have  the  10 
sense  of  exercising  this  free  creative  activity  in  other 
ways  than  in  producing  great  works  of  literature  or 
art  ;  if  it  were  not  so,  all  but  a  very  few  men  would 
be  shut  out  from  the  true  happiness  of  all  men.    They 
may  have  it  in  well-doing,  they  may  have  it  in  learn- 15 
ing,  they  may  have  it  even  in  criticising.     This  is  one 
thing  to  be  kept  in  mind.     Another  is,  that  the  exer- 
cise of  the  creative  power  in  the  production  of  great 
works  of  literature  or  art,  however  high  this  exercise 
of  it  may  rank,  is  not  at  all  epochs  and  under  all  con-  20 
ditions  possible  ;  and  that  therefore  labour  may    be 
vainly  spent  in  attempting  it,  which  might  with  more 
fruit  be  used  in  preparing  for  it,  in  rendering  it  possi- 
ble.    This  creative  power  works  with  elements,  with 
materials  ;   what  if  it  has  not  those  materials,  those  25 
elements,   ready  for  its  use  ?     In  that  case  it   must 
surely  wait  till  they  are  ready.     Now,  in  literature, — 
I  will  limit  myself  to  literature,  for  it  is  about  litera- 
ture   that    the    question    arises, — the    elements    with 
which  the  creative  power  works  are  ideas  ;  the  best  30 
ideas  on  every  matter  which  literature  touches,  cur- 
rent at  the  time.     At  any  rate  we  may  lay  it  down  as 


AT    THE  PRESENT   TIME.  5 

certain  that  in  modern  literature  no  manifestation  of 
the  creative  power  not  working  with  these  can  be  very 
important  or  fruitful.  And  I  say  current  dX  the  time, 
not  merely  accessible  at  the  time  ;  for  creative  literary 
5  genius  does  not  principally  show  itself  in  discovering 
new  ideas,  that  is  rather  the  business  of  the  philos- 
opher. The  grand  work  of  literary  genius  is  a  work 
of  synthesis  and  exposition,  not  of  analysis  and  dis- 
covery ;  its  gift  lies  in  the  faculty  of  being  happily 

10  inspired  by  a  certain  intellectual  and  spiritual  atmos- 
phere, by  a  certain  order  of  ideas,  when  it  finds  itself 
in  them  ;  of  dealing  divinely  with  these  ideas,  present- 
ing them  in  the  most  effective  and  attractive  combi- 
nations,— making  beautiful  works  with  them,  in  short. 

15  But  it  must  have  the  atmosphere,  it  must  find  itself 
amidst  the  order  of  ideas,  in  order  to  work  freely  ; 
and  these  it  is  not  so  easy  to  command.  This  is  why 
great  creative  epochs  in  literature  are  so  rare,  this  is 
why  there  is  so  much  that  is  unsatisfactory  in  the  pro- 

aoductions  of  many  men  of  real  genius  ;  because,  for  the 
creation  of  a  master-work  of  literature  two  powers 
must  concur,  the  power  of  the  man  and  the  power  of 
the  moment,  and  the  man  is  not  enough  without  the 
moment  ;  the  creative  power  has,  for  its  happy  exer- 

25  cise,  appointed  elements,  and  those  elements  are  not 
in  its  own  control. 

Nay,  they  are  more  within  the  control  of  the  critical 
power.  It  is  the  business  of  the  critical  power,  as  I 
said  in  the  words  already  quoted,  "  in  all  branches  of 

30  knowledge,  theology,  philosophy,  history,  art,  science, 
to  see  the  object  as  in  itserf  it  really  is."  Thus  it 
tends,   at  last,   to  make  an  intellectual  situation  of 


6  THE  FUNCTION   OF  CRITICISM 

which  the  creative  power  can  profitably  avail  itself. 
It  tends  to  establish  an  order  of  ideas,  if  not  absolutely 
true,  yet  true  by  comparison  with  that  which  it  dis- 
places ;  to  make  the  best  ideas  prevail.  Presently 
these  new  ideas  reach  society,  the  touch  of  truth  is  5 
the  touch  of  life,  and  there  is  a  stir  and  growth  every- 
where ;  out  of  this  stir  and  growth  come  the  creative 
epochs  of  literature. 

Or,  to  narrow  our  range,  and  quit  these  considera- 
tions of  the  general  march  of  genius  and  of  society, —  10 
considerations,  which  are  apt  to  become  too  abstract 
and  impalpable, — every  one  can  see  that  a  poet,  for 
instance,  ought  to  know  life  and  the  world  before  deal- 
ing  with    them    in    poetry  ;  and    life   and   the  world 
being  in  modern  times  very  complex  things,  the  crea- 15 
tion   of  a  modern   poet,  to  be   worth  much,  implies 
a  great  critical  effort  behind  it  ;  else  it  must  be  a  com- 
paratively poor,  barren,  and  short-lived  affair.     This 
is  why  Byron's  poetry  had  so  little  endurance  in  it, 
and  Goethe's  so  much  ;  both  Byron  and  Goethe  had  20 
a  great  productive  power,  but  Goethe's  was  nourished 
by  a  great  critical  effort  providing  the  true  materials 
for  it,  and  Byron's  was  not  ;  Goethe  knew  life  and  the 
world,  the  poet's  necessary  subjects,  much  more  com- 
prehensively and  thoroughly  than  Byron.     He  knew  a  25 
great  deal  more   of  them,  and  he  knew  them  much 
more  as  they  really  are. 

It  has  long  seemed  to  me  that  the  burst  of  creative 
activity  in  our  literature,  through  the  first  quarter  of 
this  century,  had  about  it   in   fact   something  prema-30 
ture  ;  and  that   from   this  cause   its   productions  are 
doomed,  most  of  them,  in  spite  of  the  sanguine  hopes 


AT   THE   PRESENT   TIME.  7 

which  accompanied  and  do  still  accompany  them,  to 
prove  hardly  more  lasting  than  the  productions  of  far 
less  splendid  epochs.  And  this  prematureness  comes 
from  its  having  proceeded  without  having  its  proper 
5  data,  without  sufficient  materials  to  work  with.  In 
other  words,  the  English  poetry  of  the  first  quarter  of 
this  century,  with  plenty  of  energy,  plenty  of  creative 
force,  did  not  know  enough.  This  makes  Byron  so 
empty  of  matter,  Shelley  so   incoherent,  Wordsworth 

ioeven,  profound  as  he  is,  yet  so  wanting  in  complete- 
ness and  variety.  Wordsworth  cared  little  for  books, 
and  disparaged  Goethe.  I  admire  Wordsworth,  as  he 
is,  so  much  that  I  cannot  wish  him  different  ;  and  it  is 
vain,  no  doubt,  to  imagine  such  a  man  different  from 

15  what  he  is,  to  suppose  that  he  could  have  been  differ- 
ent. But  surely  the  one  thing  wanting  to  make 
Wordsworth  an  even  greater  poet  than  he  is, — his 
thought  richer,  and  his  influence  of  wider  applica- 
tion,— was   that  he  should  have  read    more    books, 

20  among  them,  no  doubt,  those  of  that  Goethe  whom  he 
disparaged  without  reading  him. 

But  to  speak  of  books  and  reading  may  easily  lead 
to  a  misunderstanding  here.  It  was  not  really  books 
and  reading  that  lacked  to  our  poetry  at  this  epoch  ; 

25  Shelley  had  plenty  of  reading,  Coleridge  had  immense 
reading.  Pindar  and  Sophocles — as  we  all  say  so 
glibly,  and  often  with  so  little  discernment  of  the  real 
import  of  what  we  are  saying — had  not  many  books  ; 
Shakspeare  was   no   deep  reader.     True ;    but  in  the 

30  Greece  of  Pindar  and  Sophocles,  in  the  England  of 
Shakspeare,  the  poet  lived  in  a  current  of  ideas  in  the 
highest  degree  animating  and  nourishing  to  the  crea- 


8  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

tive  power ;  society  was,  in  the  fullest  measure, 
permeated  by  fresh  thought,  intelligent  and  alive. 
And  this  state  of  things  is  the  true  basis  for  the  crea- 
tive power's  exercise,  in  this  it  finds  its  data,  its 
materials,  truly  ready  for  its  hand  ;  all  the  books  and  5 
reading  in  the  world  are  only  valuable  as  they  are 
helps  to  this.  Even  when  this  does  not  actually 
exist,  books  and  reading  may  enable  a  man  to  con- 
struct a  kind  of  semblance  of  it  in  his  own  mind,  a 
world  of  knowledge  and  intelligence  in  which  he  may  iq 
live  and  work.  This  is  by  no  means  an  equivalent  to 
the  artist  for  the  nationally  diffused  life  and  thought 
of  the  epochs  of  Sophocles  or  Shakspeare ;  but,  be- 
sides that  it  may  be  a  means  of  preparation  for  such 
epochs,  it  does  really  constitute,  if  many  share  in  it,  a  15 
quickening  and  sustaining  atmosphere  of  great  value. 
Such  an  atmosphere  the  many-sided  learning  and  the 
long  and  widely-combined  critical  effort  of  Germany 
formed  for  Goethe,  when  he  lived  and  worked.  There 
was  no  national  glow  of  life  and  thought  there  as  in  the  20 
Athens  of  Pericles  or  the  England  of  Elizabeth.  That 
was  the  poet's  weakness.  But  there  was  a  sort  of 
equivalent  for  it  in  the  complete  culture  and  unfettered 
thinking  of  a  large  body  of  Germans.  That  was  his 
strength.  In  the  England  of  the  first  quarter  of  this  25 
century  there  was  neither  a  national  glow  of  life  and 
thought,  such  as  we  had  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth,  nor 
yet  a  culture  and  a  force  of  learning  and  criticism 
such  as  were  to  be  found  in  Germany.  Therefore  the 
creative  power  of  poetry  wanted,  for  success  in  the  30 
highest  sense,  materials  and  a  basis  ;  a  thorough  in- 
terpretation of  the  world  was  necessarily  denied  to  it. 


AT    THE   PRESENT    TIME.  9 

At  first  sight  it  seems  strange  that  out  of  the  im- 
mense stir  of  the  French  Revolution  and  its  age 
should  not  have  come  a  crop  of  works  of  genius  equal 
to  that  which  came  out  of  the  stir  of  the  great  produc- 

5  tive  time  of  Greece,  or  out  of  that  of  the  Renascence, 
with  its  powerful  episode  the  Reformation.  But  the 
truth  is  that  the  stir  of  the  French  Revolution  took  a 
character  which  essentially  distinguished  it  from  such 
movements  as  these.     These  were,  in  the  main,  disin- 

10  terestedly  intellectual  and  spiritual  movements  ; 
movements  in  which  the  human  spirit  looked  for  its 
satisfaction  in  itself  and  in  the  increased  play  of  its 
own  activity.  The  French  Revolution  took  a  politi- 
cal, practical  character.     The  movement  which  went 

15  on  in  France  under  the  old  regime,  from  1700  to  1789, 
was  far  more  really  akin  than  that  of  the  Revolution 
itself  to  the  movement  of  the  Renascence  ;  the  France 
of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  told  far  more  powerfully 
upon  the   mind  of    Europe  than  the  France  of   the 

20  Revolution.  Goethe  reproached  this  last  expressly 
with  having  "  thrown  quiet  culture  back."  Nay,  and 
the  true  key  to  how  much  in  our  Byron,  even  in  our 
Wordsworth,  is  this  ! — that  they  had  their  source  in  a 
great  movement  of  feeling,  not  in  a  great  movement  of 

25  mind.  The  French  Revolution,  however, — that  object 
of  so  much  blind  love  and  so  much  blind  hatred, — 
found  undoubtedly  its  motive-power  in  the  intelligence 
of  men,  and  not  in  their  practical  sense  ;  this  is  what 
distinguishes  it  from  the  English  Revolution  of  Charles 

30  the  First's  time.  This  is  what  makes  it  a  more  spirit- 
ual event  than  our  Revolution,  an  event  of  much  more 
powerful  and  world-wide  interest,  though  practically 


IO  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

less  successful  ;  it  appeals  to  an  order  of  ideas  which 
are  universal,  certain,  permanent.  1789  asked  of  a 
thing,  Is  it  rational?  1642  asked  of  a  tiling,  Is  it 
legal  ?  or,  when  it  went  furthest,  Is  it  according  to 
conscience  ?  This  is  the  English  fashion,  a  fashion  to  5 
be  treated,  within  its  own  sphere,  with  the  highest 
respect  ;  for  its  success,  within  its  own  sphere,  has  been 
prodigious.  But  what  is  law  in  one  place  is  not  law 
in  another,  what  is  law  here  to-day  is  not  law  even 
here  to-morrow  ;  and  as  for  conscience,  what  is  bind- 10 
ing  on  one  man's  conscience  is  not  binding  on 
another's.  The  old  woman  who  threw  her  stool  at  the 
head  of  the  surpliced  minister  in  St.  Giles's  Church  at 
Edinburgh  obeyed  an  impulse  to  which  millions  of 
the  human  race  may  be  permitted  to  remain  strangers.  15 
But  the  prescriptions  of  reason  are  absolute,  unchang- 
ing, of  universal  validity  ;  to  count  by  tens  is  the  easiest 
way  of  counting — that  is  a  proposition  of  which  every- 
one, from  here  to  the  Antipodes,  feels  the  force  ;  at 
least  I  should  say  so  if  we  did  not  live  in  a  country  20 
where  it  is  not  impossible  that  any  morning  we  may 
find  a  letter  in  the  Times  declaring  that  a  decimal 
coinage  is  an  absurdity.  That  a  whole  nation  should 
have  been  penetrated  with  an  enthusiasm  for  pure 
reason,  and  with  an  ardent  zeal  for  making  its  pre- 25 
scriptions  triumph,  is  a  very  remarkable  thing,  when 
we  consider  how  little  of  mind,  or  anything  so  worthy 
and  quickening  as  mind,  comes  into  the  motives 
which  alone,  in  general,  impel  great  masses  of  men. 
In  spite  of  the  extravagant  direction  given  to  this  30 
enthusiasm,  in  spite  of  the  crimes  and  follies  in  which 
it  lost  itself,  the  French  Revolution  derives  from  the 


AT   THE  PRESENT   TIME.  II 

force,  truth,  and  universality  of  the  ideas  which  it 
took  for  its  law,  and  from  the  passion  with  which  it 
could  inspire  a  multitude  for  these  ideas,  a  unique  and 
still  living  power  ;  it  is — it  will  probably  long  remain — 
5  the  greatest,  the  most  animating  event  in  history.  And 
as  no  sincere  passion  for  the  things  of  the  mind,  even 
though  it  turn  out  in  many  respects  an  unfortunate 
passion,  is  ever  quite  thrown  away  and  quite  barren  of 
good,    France   has   reaped   from   hers  one    fruit — the 

to  natural  and  legitimate  fruit,  though  not  precisely  the 
grand  fruit  she  expected  :  she  is  the  country  in  Europe 
where  the  people  is  most  alive. 

But  the  mania  for  giving  an  immediate  political  and 
practical  application  to  all  these  fine  ideas  of  the  rea- 

15  son  was  fatal.  Here  an  Englishman  is  in  his  element : 
on  this  theme  we  can  all  go  on  for  hours.  And  all 
we  are  in  the  habit  of  saying  on  it  has  undoubtedly  a 
great  deal  of  truth.  Ideas  cannot  be  too  much  prized 
in  and  for  themselves,  cannot  be  too  much  lived  with  ; 

20  but  to  transport  them  abruptly  into  the  world  of  poli- 
tics and  practice,  violently  to  revolutionise  this  world 
to  their  bidding, — that  is  quite  another  thing.  There 
is  the  world  of  ideas  and  there  is  the  world  of  practice  ; 
the  French  are  often  for  suppressing  the  one,  and  the 

25  English  the  other  ;  but  neither  is  to  be  suppressed.  A 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons  said  to  me  the 
other  day  :  "  That  a  thing  is  an  anomaly,  I  consider 
to  be  no  objection  to  it  whatever.'-  I  venture  to  think 
he  was  wrong  ;  that  a  thing  is  an  anomaly  is  anobjec- 

30  tion  to  it,  but  absolutely  and  in  the  sphere  of  ideas  :  it 
is  not  necessarily,  under  such  and  such  circumstances, 
or  at  such  and  such   a  moment,  an   objection  to  it  in 


12  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

the  sphere  of  politics  and  practice.  Joubert  has  said 
beautifully  :  "  C'est  la  force  et  le  droit  qui  reglent 
toutes  choses  dans  le  monde  ;  la  force  en  attendant  le 
droit."  (Force  and  right  are  the  governors  of  this 
world  ;  force  till  right  is  ready.)  Force  till  right  is  5 
ready;  and  till  right  is  ready,  force,  the  existing  order 
of  things,  is  justified,  is  the  legitimate  ruler.  But 
right  is  something  moral,  and  implies  inward  recogni- 
tion, free  assent  of  the  will  ;  we  are  not  ready  for 
right, — right,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  is  not  ready, —  10 
until  we  have  attained  this  sense  of  seeing  it  and  will- 
ing it.  The  way  in  which  for  us  it  may  change  and 
transform  force,  the  existing  order  of  things,  and  be- 
come, in  its  turn,  the  legitimate  ruler  of  the  world, 
should  depend  on  the  way  in  which,  when  our  time  15 
comes,  we  see  it  and  will  it.  Therefore  for  other  peo- 
ple enamoured  of  their  own  newly  discerned  right,  to 
attempt  to  impose  it  upon  us  as  ours,  and  violently  to 
substitute  their  right  for  our  force,  is  an  act  of  tyranny, 
and  to  be  resisted.  It  sets  at  nought  the  second  great  20 
half  of  our  maxim,  force  till  right  is  ready.  This  was 
the  grand  error  of  the  French  Revolution  ;  and  its 
movement  of  ideas,  by  quitting  the  intellectual  sphere 
and  rushing  furiously  into  the  political  sphere,  ran, 
indeed,  a  prodigious  and  memorable  course,  but  pro- 25 
duced  no  such  intellectual  fruit  as  the  movement  of 
ideas  of  the  Renascence,  and  created,  in  opposition  to 
itself,  what  I  may  call  an  epoch  of  concentration.  The 
great  force  of  that  epoch  of  concentration  was  Eng- 
land ;  and  the  great  voice  of  that  epoch  of  concentra-  30 
tion  was  Burke.  It  is  the  fashion  to  treat  Burke's 
writings  on  the  French  Revolution  as  superannuated 


AT    THE   PRESENT    TIME.  1 3 

and  conquered  by  the  event  ;  as  the  eloquent  but  un- 
philosophical  tirades  of  bigotry  and  prejudice.  I  will 
not  deny  that  they  are  often  disfigured  by  the  violence 
and  passion  of  the  moment,  and  that  in  some  directions 
5  Burke's  view  was  bounded,  and  his  observation  there- 
fore at  fault.  But  on  the  whole,  and  for  those  who  can 
make  the  needful  corrections,  what  distinguishes  these 
writings  is  their  profound,  permanent,  fruitful,  philo- 
sophical truth.     They  contain  the  true  philosophy  of 

loan  epoch  of  concentration,  dissipate  the  heavy  atmos- 
phere which  its  own  nature  is  apt  to  engender  round 
it,  and  make  its  resistance  rational  instead  of 
mechanical,  -r 

But  Burke  is  so  great  because,  almost  alone  in  Eng- 

15  land,  he  brings  thought  to  bear  upon  politics,  he 
saturates  politics  with  thought.  It  is  his  accident  that 
his  ideas  were  at  the  service  of  an  epoch  of  concen- 
tration, not  of  an  epoch  of  expansion  ;  it  is  his 
characteristic  that  he  so  lived  by  ideas,  and  had  such 

20  a  source  of  them  welling  up  within  him,  that  he  could 
float  even  an  epoch  of  concentration  and  English  Tory 
politics  with  them.  It  does  not  hurt  him  that  Dr. 
Price  and  the  Liberals  were  enraged  with  him  ;  it 
does  not  even  hurt  him  that  George  the  Third  and  the 

25  Tories  were  enchanted  with  him.  His  greatness  is 
that  he  lived  in  a  world  which  neither  English  Liberal- 
ism nor  English  Toryism  is  apt  to  enter  ; — the  world  of 
ideas,  not  the  world  of  catchwords  and  party  habits. 
So  far  is  it  from  being  really  true  of  him  that  he  "  to 

30  party  gave  up  what  was  meant  for  mankind,"  that  at 
the  very  end  of  his  fierce  struggle  with  the  French 
Revolution,  after  all  his  invectives  against  its  false  pre« 


14  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

tensions,  hollovvness,  and  madness,  with  his  sincere 
conviction  of  its  mischievousness,  he  can  close  a 
memorandum  on  the  best  means  of  combating  it,  some 
of  the  last  pages  he  ever  wrote, — the  Thoughts  on 
French  Affairs,  in  December,  1791, — with  these  strik- 5 
ing  words  : — 

"  The  evil  is  stated,  in  my  opinion,  as  it  exists.  The 
remedy  must  be  where  power,  wisdom,  and  informa- 
tion, I  hope,  are  more  united  with  good  intentions  than 
they  can  be  with  me.  I  have  done  with  this  subject,  I  ia 
believe,  for  ever.  It  has  given  me  many  anxious 
moments  for  the  last  two  years.  If  a  great  change  is 
to  be  made  in  human  affairs,  the  minds  of  men  will  be 
fitted  to  it  j  the  general  opinions  and  feelings  will  draw 
that  way.  Every  fear,  every  hope  will  forward  it;  and  15 
then  they  who  persist  in  opposing  this  mighty  current  in 
human  affairs,  will  appear  rather  to  resist  the  decrees  of 
Providence  itself,  than  the  mere  designs  of  men.  They 
will  not  be  resolute  and  firm,  but  perverse  and  obsti- 
nate." 20 

That  return  of  Burke  upon  himself  has  always 
seemed  to  me  one  of  the  finest  things  in  English 
literature,  or  indeed  in  any  literature.  That  is  what 
I  call  living  by  ideas  :  when  one  side  of  a  question 
has  long  had  your  earnest  support,  when  all  your  25 
feelings  are  engaged,  when  you  hear  all  round  you  no 
language  but  one,  when  your  party  talks  this  language 
like  a  steam-engine  and  can  imagine  no  other, — still 
to  be  able  to  think,  still  to  be  irresistibly  carried,  if  so 
it  be,  by  the  current  of  thought  to  the  opposite  side  30 
of  the  question,  and,  like  Balaam,  to  be  unable  to 
speak  anything  but  what  the  lord  has  put  in  your  mouth. 


AT   THE  PR E SENT    TIME.  15 

I  know  nothing  more  striking,  and  I  must  add  that  I 
know  nothing  more  un-English. 

For  the  Englishman  in  general  is  like  my  friend  the 
Member  of  Parliament,  and  believes,  point-blank,  that 
5  for  a  thing  to  be  an  anomaly  is  absolutely  no  objec- 
tion to  it  whatever.  He  is  like  the  Lord  Auckland 
of  Burke's  day,  who,  in  a  memorandum  on  the  French 
Revolution,  talks  of  "  certain  miscreants,  assuming 
the  name  of  philosophers,  who  have  presumed  them- 

10  selves  capable  of  establishing  a  new  system  of  society." 
The  Englishman  has  been  called  a  political  animal, 
and  he  values  what  is  political  and  practical  so  much 
that  ideas  easily  become  objects  of  dislike  in  his  eyes, 
and  thinkers  '' miscreants,"  because  ideas  and  thinkers 

15  have  rashly  meddled  with  politics  and  practice.  This 
would  be  all  very  well  if  the  dislike  and  neglect  con- 
fined themselves  to  ideas  transported  out  of  their  own 
sphere,  and  meddling  rashly  with  practice  ;  but  they 
are  inevitably  extended  to  ideas  as  such,  and  to  the 

20  whole  life  of  intelligence  ;  practice  is  everything,  a 
free  play  of  the  mind  is  nothing.  The  notion  of  the 
free  play  of  the  mind  upon  all  subjects  being  a  pleas- 
ure in  itself,  being  an  object  of  desire,  being  an  essen- 
tial  provider  of    elements  without  which   a   nation's 

25  spirit,  whatever  compensations  it  may  have  for  them, 
must,  in  the  long  run,  die  of  inanition,  hardly  enters 
into  an  Englishman's  thoughts.  It  is  noticeable  that 
the  word  curiosity,  which  in  other  languages  is  used  in 
a  good  sense,  to  mean,  as  a  high  and  fine   quality   of 

30  man's  nature,  just  this  disinterested  love  of  a  free 
play  of  the  mind  on  all  subjects,  for  its  own  sake, — it 
is  noticeable,  I  say,  that  this  word  has  in  our  language 


x6  THE  FUNCTION   OF  CRITICISM 

no  sense  of  the  kind,  no  sense  but  a  rather  bad  and 
disparaging  one.  But  criticism,  real  criticism,  is 
essentially  the  exercise  of  this  very  quality.  It  obeys 
an  instinct  prompting  it  to  try  to  know  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  world,  irrespectively  of  5 
practice,  politics,  and  everything  of  the  kind  ;  and  to 
value  knowledge  and  thought  as  they  approach  this 
best,  without  the  intrusion  of  any  other  considera- 
tions whatever.  This  is  an  instinct  for  which  there 
is,  I  think,  little  original  sympathy  in  the  practical  ia 
English  nature,  and  .what  there  was  of  it  has  under- 
gone a  long  benumbing  period  of  blight  and  suppres- 
sion in  the  epoch  of  concentration  which  followed  the 
French  Revolution. 

But   epochs  of  concentration  cannot  well  endure  i£ 
for  ever  ;    epochs  of  expansion,  in  the  due  course  of 
things,   follow  them.     Such    an   epoch   of   expansion 
seems  to  be  opening  in   this  country.     In  the   first 
place  all  danger  of  a  hostile  forcible  pressure  of  foreign 
ideas  upon  our  practice  has  long  disappeared  ;  like  20 
the  traveller  in  the  fable,  therefore,  we  begin  to  wear 
our  cloak  a  little  more  loosely.     Then,  with  a  long 
peace,  the  ideas  of  Europe  steal  gradually  and   ami- 
cably in,  and  mingle,  though  in  infinitesimally  small 
quantities   at  a   time,  with  our  own   notions.     Then,  25 
too,  in  spite  of  all  that   is  said  about  the  absorbing 
and  brutalising  influence  of  our  passionate   material 
progress,  it  seems  to  me  indisputable  that  this  progress 
is  likely,  though  not  certain,  to  lead  in  the  end  to  an 
apparition  of  intellectual  life  ;  and  that  man,  after  he  30 
has  made  himself  perfectly  comfortable  and  has  now 
to  determine  what  to  do  with  himself  next,  may  begin 


AT   THE   PRESENT    TIME.  1 7 

to  remember  that  he  has  a  mind,  and  that  the  mind 
may  be  made  the  source  of  great  pleasure.  I  grant  it 
is  mainly  the  privilege  of  faith,  at  present,  to  discern 
this  end  to  our  railways,  our  business,  and  our  fortune- 
5  making  ;  but  we  shall  see  if,  here  as  elsewhere,  faith 
is  not  in  the  end  the  true  prophet.  Our  ease,  our 
travelling,  and  our  unbounded  liberty  to  hold  just  as 
hard  and  securely  as  we  please  to  the  practice  to  which 
our  notions   have  given   birth,  all   tend   to  beget  an 

10  inclination  to  deal  a  little  more  freely  with  these 
notions  themselves,  to  canvass  them  a  little,  to  pene- 
trate a  little  into  their  real  nature.  Flutterings  of 
curiosity,  in  the  foreign  sense  of  the  word,  appear 
amongst  us,  and  it  is  in  these  that  criticism  must  look 

15  to  find  its  account.     Criticism  first  ;    a  time  of  true 
creative  activity,  perhaps, — which,  as  I  have  said,  must 
inevitably  be  preceded  amongst  us  by  a  time  of  criti- 
cism,— hereafter,  when  criticism  has  done  its  work. 
It  is  of  the  last  importance  that  English  criticism 

20  should  clearly  discern  what  rule  for  its  course,  in 
order  to  avail  itself  of  the  field  now  opening  to  it,  and 
to  produce  fruit  for  the  future,  it  ought  to  take.  The 
rule  may  be  summed  up  in  one  word, — disinterestedness. 
And  how  is  criticism  to  show  disinterestedness  ?     By 

25  keeping  aloof  from  what  is  called  "  the  practical  view 
of  things  ";  by  resolutely  following  the  law  of  its  own 
nature,  which  is  to  be  a  free  play  of  the  mind  on  all 
subjects  which  it  touches.  By  steadily  refusing  to 
lend  itself  to  any  of  those  ulterior,  political,  practical 

30  considerations  about  ideas,  which  plenty  of  people 
will  be  sure  to  attach  to  them,  which  perhaps  ought 
often  to  be  attached  to  them,  which  in  this  country  at 


1 8  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

any  rate  are  certain  to  be  attached  to  them  quite 
sufficiently,  but  which  criticism  has  really  nothing  to 
do  with.  Its  business  is,  as  I  have  said,  simply  to 
know  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the 
world,  and  by  in  its  turn  making  this  known,  to  create  5 
a  current  of  true  and  fresh  ideas.  Its  business  is  to 
do  this  with  inflexible  honesty,  with  due  ability  ;  but 
its  business  is  to  do  no  more,  and  to  leave  alone  all 
questions  of  practical  consequences  and  applications, 
questions  which  will  never  fail  to  have  due  prominence  u 
given  to  them.  Else  criticism,  besides  being  really 
false  to  its  own  nature,  merely  continues  in  the  old 
rut  which  it  has  hitherto  followed  in  this  country,  and 
will  certainly  miss  the  chance  now  given  to  it.  For 
what  is  at  present  the  bane  of  criticism  in  this  country  ?  15 
It  is  that  practical  considerations  cling  to  it  and  stifle 
it.  It  subserves  interests  not  its  own.  Our  organs  of 
criticism  are  organs  of  men  and  parties  having  practi- 
cal ends  to  serve,  and  with  them  those  practical  ends 
are  the  first  thing  and  the  play  of  mind  the  second  ;  2c 
so  much  play  of  mind  as  is  compatible  with  the  prose- 
cution of  those  practical  ends  is  all  that  is  wanted. 
An  organ  like  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  having  for 
its  main  function  to  understand  and  utter  the  best 
that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world,  existing,  it  25 
may  be  said,  as  just  an  organ  for  a  free  play  of  the 
mind,  we  have  not.  But  we  have  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  existing  as  an  organ  of  the  old  Whigs,  and 
for  as  much  play  of  the  mind  as  may  suit  its  being 
that  ;  we  have  the  Quarterly  Revietv,  existing  as  an  30 
organ  of  the  Tories,  and  for  as  much  play  of  mind  as 
may  suit  its  being  that ;  we  have  the  British  Quarterly 


AT  THE  PRESENT    TIME.  19 

Review,  existing  as  an  organ  of  the  political  Dissenters, 
and  for  as  much  play  of  mind  as  may  suit  its  being 
that ;  we  have  the  Times,  existing  as  an  organ  of  the 
common,  satisfied,  well-to-do  Englishman,  and  for  as 
5  much  play  of  mind  as  may  suit  its  being  that.  And 
so  on  through  all  the  various  fractions,  political  and 
religious,  of  our  society  ;  every  fraction  has,  as  such, 
its  organ  of  criticism,  but  the  notion  of  combining  all 
fractions  in  the  common  pleasure  of  a  free  disinter- 

ioested  play  of  mind  meets  with  no  favour.  Directly 
this  play  of  mind  wants  to  have  more  scope,  and  to 
forget  the  pressure  of  practical  considerations  a  little, 
it  is  checked,  it  is  made  to  feel  the  chain.  We  saw 
this  the  other  day  in  the  extinction,  so  much  to  be 

15  regretted,  of  the  Home  and  Foreign  Revieiu.  Perhaps 
in  no  organ  of  criticism  in  this  country  was  there  so 
much  knowledge,  so  much  play  of  mind  ;  but  these 
could  not  save  it.  The  Dublin  Review  subordinates 
play  of  mind  to  the  practical  business  of  English  and 

20  Irish  Catholicism,  and  lives.  It  must  needs  be  that 
men  should  act  in  sects  and  parties,  that  each  of  these 
sects  and  parties  should  have  its  organ,  and  should 
make  this  organ  subserve  the  interests  of  its  action  ; 
but   it    would   be  well,   too,  that   there   should  be   a 

25  criticism,  not  the  minister  of  these  interests,  not  their 
enemy,  but  absolutely  and  entirely  independent  of 
them.  No  other  criticism  will  ever  attain  any  real 
authority  or  make  any  real  way  towards  its  end, — the 
creating  a  current  of  true  and  fresh  ideas. 

30  It  is  because  criticism  has  so  little  kept  in  the  pure 
intellectual  sphere,  has  so  little  detached  itself  from 
practice,  has  been  so  directly  polemical  and  contro* 


20  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

versial,  that  it  has  so  ill  accomplished,  in  this  country, 
its  best  spiritual  work  ;  which  is  to  keep  man  from  a 
self-satisfaction  which  is  retarding  and  vulgarising,  to 
lead  him  towards  perfection,  by  making  his  mind 
dwell  upon  what  is  excellent  in  itself,  and  the  abso-  5 
lute  beauty  and  fitness  of  things.  A  polemical  prac- 
tical criticism  makes  men  blind  even  to  the  ideal 
perfection  of  their  practice,  makes  them  willingly 
assert  its  ideal  perfection,  in  order  the  better  to  secure 
it  against  attack  ;  and  clearly  this  is  narrowing  and  10 
baneful  for  them.  If  they  were  reassured  on  the 
practical  side,  speculative  considerations  of  ideal 
perfection  they  might  be  brought  to  entertain,  and 
their  spiritual  horizon  would  thus  gradually  widen. 
Sir  Charles  Adderley  says  to  the  Warwickshire  15 
farmers  : — 

"  Talk  of  the  improvement  of  breed  !  Why,  the 
race  we  ourselves  represent,  the  men  and  women, 
the  old  Anglo-Saxon  race,  are  the  best  breed  in  the 
whole  world.  .  .  .  The  absence  of  a  too  enervating  20 
climate,  too  unclouded  skies,  and  a  too  luxurious 
nature,  has  produced  so  vigorous  a  race  of  people,  and 
has  rendered  us  so  superior  to  all  the  world." 

Mr.  Roebuck  says  to  the  Sheffield  cutlers  : — 

"I  look  around  me  and  ask  what  is  the  state  of 25 
England  ?  Is  not  property  safe  ?  Is  not  every  man 
able  to  say  what  he  likes  ?  Can  you  not  walk  from 
one  end  of  England  to  the  other  in  perfect  security  ? 
I  ask  you  whether,  the  world  over  or  in  past  history, 
there  is  anything  like  it  ?  Nothing.  I  pray  that  our  3c 
unrivalled  happiness  may  last." 

Now   obviously    there  is  a  peril    for   poor   human 


AT   THE   PRESENT    TIME.  21 

nature  in  words  and  thoughts  of  such  exuberant  self- 
satisfaction,  until  we  find  ourselves  safe  in  the  streets 
of  the  Celestial  City. 

"  Das  wenige  verschwindet  leicht  dem  Blicke 
5  Der  vorwarts  sieht,  wie  viel  noch  ubrig  bleibt — " 

says  Goethe  ;  "  the  little  that  is  done  seems  nothing 
when  we  look  forward  and  see  how  much  we  have  yet 
to  do."  Clearly  this  is  a  better  line  of  reflection  for 
weak  humanity,  so  long  as  it  remains  on  this  earthly 

io  field  of  labour  and  trial. 

But  neither  Sir  Charles  Adderley  nor  Mr.  Roebuck 
is  by  nature  inaccessible  to  considerations  of  this  sort. 
They  only  lose  sight  of  them  owing  to  the  controver- 
sial life  we  all  lead,  and  the  practical  form  which  all 

15  speculation  takes  with  us.  They  have  in  view  oppo- 
nents whose  aim  is  not  ideal,  but  practical  ;  and  in 
their  zeal  to  uphold  their  own  practice  against  these 
innovators,  they  go  so  far  as  even  to  attribute  to  this 
practice  an  ideal    perfection.      Somebody  has   been 

20  wanting  to  introduce  a  six-pound  franchise,  or  to 
abolish  church-rates,  or  to  collect  agricultural  statistics 
by  force,  or  to  diminish  local  self-government.  How 
natural,  in  reply  to  such  proposals,  very  likely  im- 
proper or  ill-timed,  to  go  a  little  beyond  the  mark, 

25  and  to  say  stoutly,  "  Such  a  race  of  people  as  we 
stand,  so  superior  to  all  the  world  !  The  old  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  the  best  breed  in  the  whole  world  !  I 
pray  that  our  unrivalled  happiness  may  last  !  I  ask 
you  whether,  the  world  over  or  in  past  history,  there 

30 is  anything  like  it?"  And  so  long  as  criticism 
answers    this   dithyramb   by   insisting    that    the   old 


22  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

Anglo-Saxon  race  would  be  still  more  superior  to  all 
others  if  it  had  no  church-rates,  or  that  our  unrivalled 
happiness  would  last  yet  longer  with  a  six-pound 
franchise,  so  long  will  the  strain,  "  The  best  breed  in 
the  whole  world  !  "  swell  louder  and  louder,  every-  5 
thing  ideal  and  refining  will  be  lost  out  of  sight,  and 
both  the  assailed  and  their  critics  will  remain  in  a 
sphere,  to  say  the  truth,  perfectly  unvital,  a  sphere  in 
which  spiritual  progression  is  impossible.  But  let 
criticism  leave  church-rates  and  the  franchise  alone,  10 
and  in  the  most  candid  spirit,  without  a  single  lurking 
thought  of  practical  innovation,  confront  with  our 
dithyramb  this  paragraph  on  which  I  stumbled  in  a 
newspaper  immediately  after  reading  Mr.  Roebuck  : — 

"A  shocking  child  murder  has  just  been  committed  15 
at  Nottingham.  A  girl  named  Wragg  left  the  work- 
house there  on  Saturday  morning  with  her  young 
illegitimate  child.  The  child  was  soon  afterwards 
found  dead  on  Mapperly  Hills,  having  been  strangled. 
Wragg  is  in  custody."  2c 

Nothing  but  that  ;  but,  in  juxtaposition  with  the 
absolute  eulogies  of  Sir  Charles  Adderley  and  Mr. 
Roebuck,  how  eloquent,  how  suggestive  are  those 
few  lines  !  "  Our  old  Anglo-Saxon  breed,  the  best  in 
the  whole  world  !" — how  much  that  is  harsh  and  ill- 25 
favoured  there  is  in  this  best  !  Wragg  !  If  we  are 
to  talk  of  ideal  perfection,  of  "  the  best  in  the  whole 
world,"  has  any  one  reflected  what  a  touch  of  gross- 
ness  in  our  race,  what  an  original  shortcoming  in  the 
more  delicate  spiritual  perceptions,  is  shown  by  the  30 
natural  growth  amongst  us  of  such  hideous  names, — 
Higginbottom,  Stiggins,  Bugg  !     In  Ionia  and  Attica 


AT   THE   PRESENT   TIME.  23 

they  were  luckier  in  this  respect  than  "  the  best  race 
in  the  world  ";  by  the  Ilissus  there  was  no  Wragg, 
poor  thing!  And  "our  unrivalled  happiness"; — 
what  an  element  of  grimness,  bareness,  and  hideous- 
tness  mixes  with  it  and  blurs  it  ;  the  workhouse,  the 
dismal  Mapperly  Hills, — how  dismal  those  who  have 
seen  them  will  remember  ; — the  gloom,  the  smoke, 
the  cold,  the  strangled  illegitimate  child!  "I  ask 
you  whether,  the  world  over  or  in  past  history,  there 

10  is  anything  like  it  ?  "  Perhaps  not,  one  is  inclined  to 
answer  ;  but  at  any  rate,  in  that  case,  the  world  is 
very  much  to  be  pitied.  And  the  final  touch, — short, 
bleak,  and  inhuman  :  Wragg  is  in  custody.  The  sex 
lost  in  the  confusion  of  our  unrivalled  happiness  ;    or 

15  (shall  I  say  ?)  the  superfluous  Christian  name  lopped  off 
by  the  straightforward  vigour  of  our  old  Anglo-Saxon 
breed  !  There  is  profit  for  the  spirit  in  such  con- 
trasts as  this  ;  criticism  serves  the  cause  of  perfection 
by  establishing  them.     By  eluding  sterile  conflict,  by 

20  refusing  to  remain  in  the  sphere  where  alone  narrow 
and  relative  conceptions  have  any  worth  and  validity, 
criticism  may  diminish  its  momentary  importance,  but 
only  in  this  way  has  it  a  chance  of  gaining  admittance 
for  those  wider  and  more  perfect  conceptions  to  which 

25  all  its  duty  is  really  owed.  Mr.  Roebuck  will  have  a 
poor  opinion  of  an  adversary  who  replies  to  his  defiant 
songs  of  triumph  only  by  murmuring  under  his  breath, 
Wragg  is  in  custody  ;  but  in  no  other  way  will  these 
songs  of  triumph  be  induced  gradually  to  moderate 

30  themselves,  to  get  rid  of  what  in  them  is  excessive 

and  offensive,  and  to  fall  into  a  softer  and  truer  key. 

It  will  be  said  that  it  is  a  very  subtle  and  indirect 


24  THE  FUNCTION   OF  CRITICISM 

action  which  I  am  thus  prescribing  for  criticism,  and 
that,  by  embracing  in  this  manner  the  Indian  virtue 
of  detachment  and  abandoning  the  sphere  of  practical 
life,  it  condemns  itself  to  a  slow  and  obscure  work. 
Slow  and  obscure  it  may  be,  but  it  is  the  only  propers 
work  of  criticism.  The  mass  of  mankind  will  never 
have  any  ardent  zeal  for  seeing  things  as  they  are  ; 
very  inadequate  ideas  will  always  satisfy  them.  On 
these  inadequate  ideas  reposes,  and  must  repose,  the 
general  practice  of  the  world.  That  is  as  much  as  10 
saying  that  whoever  sets  himself  to  see  things  as  they 
are  will  find  himself  one  of  a  very  small  circle  ;  but 
it  is  only  by  this  small  circle  resolutely  doing  its  own 
work  that  adequate  ideas  will  ever  get  current  at  all. 
The  rush  and  roar  of  practical  life  will  always  have  a  15 
dizzying  and  attracting  effect  upon  the  most  collected 
spectator,  and  tend  to  draw  him  into  its  vortex  ; 
most  of  all  will  this  be  the  case  where  that  life  is  so 
powerful  as  it  is  in  England.  But  it  is  only  by  re- 
maining collected,  and  refusing  to  lend  himself  to  the  20 
point  of  view  of  the  practical  man,  that  the  critic  can 
do  the  practical  man  any  service  ;  and  it  is  only  by 
the  greatest  sincerity  in  pursuing  his  own  course,  and 
by  at  last  convincing  even  the  practical  man  of  his 
sincerity,  that  he  can  escape  misunderstandings  which  25 
perpetually  threaten  him. 

For  the  practical  man  is  not  apt  for  fine  distinc- 
tions, and  yet  in  these  distinctions  truth  and  the 
highest  culture  greatly  find  their  account.  But  it  is 
not  easy  to  lead  a  practical  man, — unless  you  reassure  30 
him  as  to  your  practical  intentions,  you  have  no 
chance  of  leading  him, — to  see  that  a  thing  which  he 


AT   THE   PRESENT   TIME.  25 

flas  always  been  used  to  look  at  from  one  side  only, 
which  he  greatly  values,  and  which,  looked  at  from 
that  side,  quite  deserves,  perhaps,  all  the  prizing  and 
admiring  which  he  bestows  upon  it, — that  this  thing, 
5  looked  at  from  another  side,  may  appear  much  less 
beneficent  and  beautiful,  and  yet  retain  all  its  claims 
to  our  practical  allegiance.  Where  shall  we  find 
language  innocent  enough,  how  shall  we  make  the 
spotless  purity  of  our  intentions  evident  enough,  to 

to  enable  us  to  say  to  the  political  Englishman  that  the 
British  Constitution  itself,  which,  seen  from  the  prac- 
tical side,  looks  such  a  magnificent  organ  of  progress 
and  virtue,  seen  from  the  speculative  side, — with  its 
compromises,  its  love  of  facts,  its  horror  of  theory,  its 

15  studied  avoidance  of  clear  thoughts, — that,  seen  from 
this  side,  our  august  Constitution  sometimes  looks, — 
forgive  me,  shade  of  Lord  Somers! — a  colossal  machine 
for  the  manufacture  of  Philistines  ?  How  is  Cobbett 
to  say  this  and  not  be  misunderstood,  blackened  as  he 

aois  with  the  smoke  of  a  lifelong  conflict  in  the  field  of 
political  practice  ?  how  is  Mr.  Carlyle  to  say  it  and 
not  be  misunderstood,  after  his  furious  raid  into  this 
field  with  his  Latter-day  Pamphlets?  how  is  Mr. 
Ruskin,  after  his  pugnacious  political  economy  ?     I 

E5  say,  the  critic  must  keep  out  of  the  region  of  immedi- 
ate practice  in  the  political,  social,  humanitarian  sphere, 
if  he  wants  to  make  a  beginning  for  that  more  free 
speculative  treatment  of  things,  which  may  perhaps 
one  day  make  its  benefits  felt  even  in  this  sphere,  but 

30  in  a  natural  and  thence  irresistible  manner. 

Do  what  he  will,  however,  the  critic  will  still  remain 
exposed  to  frequent  misunderstandings,  and  nowhere 


26  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

so  much  as  in  this  country.  For  here  people  are  par- 
ticularly indisposed  even  to  comprehend  that  without 
this  free  disinterested  treatment  of  things,  truth  and 
the  highest  culture  are  out  of  the  question.  So 
immersed  are  they  in  practical  life,  so  accustomed  to  5 
take  all  their  notions  from  this  life  and  its  processes, 
that  they  are  apt  to  think  that  truth  and  culture  them- 
selves can  be  reached  by  the  processes  of  this  life, 
and  that  it  is  an  impertinent  sigularity  to  think  of 
reaching  them  in  any  other.  ''We  are  all  terrce Jilii,"  10 
cries  their  eloquent  advocate;  "  all  Philistines  together. 
Away  with  the  notion  of  proceeding  by  any  other 
course  than  the  course  dear  to  the  Philistines  ;  let  us 
have  a  social  movement,  let  us  organise  and  combine 
a  party  to  pursue  truth  and  new  thought,  let  us  call  it  15 
the  liberal  party,  and  let  us  all  stick  to  each  other,  and 
back  each  other  up.  Let  us  have  no  nonsense  about 
independent  criticism,  and  intellectual  delicacy,  and 
the  few  and  the  many.  Don't  let  us  trouble  ourselves 
about  foreign  thought;  we  shall  invent  the  whole  20 
thing  for  ourselves  as  we  go  along.  If  one  of  us 
speaks  well,  applaud  him  ;  if  one  of  us  speaks  ill, 
applaud  him  too  ;  we  are  all  in  the  same  movement, 
we  are  all  liberals,  we  are  all  in  pursuit  of  truth." 
In  this  way  the  pursuit  of  truth  becomes  really  a  25 
social,  practical,  pleasurable  affair,  almost  requiring  a 
chairman,  a  secretary,  and  advertisements  ;  with  the 
excitement  of  an  occasional  scandal,  with  a  little 
resistance  to  give  the  happy  sense  of  difficulty  over- 
come; but,  in  general,  plenty  of  bustle  and  very  little  30 
thought.  To  act  is  so  easy,  as  Goethe  says;  to  think 
is  so  hard  !     It  is  true  that  the  critic  has  many  temp- 


AT   THE  PRESENT    TIME.  27 

tations  to  go  with  the  stream,  to  make  one  of  the 
party  movement,  one  of  these  terra  filii ;  it  seems 
ungracious  to  refuse  to  be  a  terra  filius,  when  so 
many  excellent  people  are  ;  but  the  critic's  duty  is  to 
5  refuse,  or,  if  resistance  is  vain,  at  least  to  cry  with 
Obermann  :  Pe'rissons  en  resistant. 

How  serious  a  matter  it  is  to  try  and  resist,  I  had 
ample  opportunity  of  experiencing  when  I  ventured 
some  time  ago  to  criticise  the  celebrated  first  volume 
10  of  Bishop  Colenso.1     The  echoes  of  the  storm  which 
was  then  raised  I  still,  from  time  to  time,  hear  grum- 
bling round  me.     That  storm  arose  out  of  a  misunder- 
standing almost  inevitable.     It  is  a  result  of  no  little 
culture  to  attain  to  a  clear  perception  that  science  and 
15  religion  are  two  wholly  different  things.     The  multi- 
tude will  for  ever  confuse  them  ;  but  happily  that  is 
of  no  great  real  importance,  for  while  the  multitude 
imagines   itself  to  live  by  its   false  science,    it   does 
really  live   by  its   true   religion.     Dr.  Colenso,  how- 
soever, in  his  first  volume  did  all  he  could  to  strengthen 
the  confusion,2  and  to  make  it  dangerous.     He  did  this 

1  So  sincere  is  my  dislike  to  all  personal  attack  and  contro- 
versy, that  I  abstain  from  reprinting,  at  this  distance  of  time  from 
the  occasion  which  called  them  forth,  the  essays  in  which  I  criti- 
cised Dr.  Colenso's  book;  I  feel  bound,  however,  after  all  that  has 
passed,  to  make  here  a  final  declaration  of  my  sincere  impenitence 
for  having  published  them.  Nay,  I  cannot  forbear  repeating  yet 
once  more,  for  his  benefit  and  that  of  his  readers,  this  sentence 
from  my  original  remarks  upon  him  :     There  is  truth  of  science 

■  and  truth  of  religion;  truth  of  science  does  not  become  truth  of 
religion  till  it  is  made  religious.  And  I  will  add  :  Let  us  have  all 
the  science  there  is  from  the  men  of  science  ;  from  the  men  of 
religion  let  us  have  religion. 

2  It  has  been  said  I  make  it  "  a  crime  against  literary  criticism 


28  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

with  the  best  intentions,  I  freely  admit,  and  with  the 
most  candid  ignorance  that  this  was  the  natural  effect 
of  what  he  was  doing ;  but,  says  Joubert,  "  Ignorance, 
which  in  matters  of  morals  extenuates  the  crime,  is 
itself,  in  intellectual  matters,  a  crime  of  the  first  order."  5 
I  criticised  Bishop  Colenso's  speculative  confusion. 
Immediately  there  was  a  cry  raised:  "What  is  this? 
here  is  a  liberal  attacking  a  liberal.  Do  not  you 
belong  to  the  movement  ?  are  not  you  a  friend  of 
truth  ?  Is  not  Bishop  Colenso  in  search  of  truth  ?  10 
then  speak  with  proper  respect  of  his  book.  Dr. 
Stanley  is  another  friend  of  truth,  and  you  speak  with 
proper  respect  of  his  book  ;  why  make  these  invidious 
differences  ?  both  books  are  excellent,  admirable,  lib- 
eral ;  Bishop  Colenso's  perhaps  the  most  so,  because  15 
it  is  the  boldest,  and  will  have  the  best  practical  con- 
sequences for  the  liberal  cause.  Do  you  want  to 
encourage  to  the  attack  of  a  brother  liberal  his,  and 
your,  and  our  implacable  enemies,  the  Church  and 
State  Review  or  the  Record, — the  High  Church  rhi- 2c 
noceros  and  the  Evangelical  hyrena?  Be  silent,  there- 
fore ;  or  rather  speak,  speak  as  loud  as  ever  you  can  ! 
and  go  into  ecstasies  over  the  eighty  and  odd  pigeons." 
But  criticism  cannot  follow  this  coarse  and  indis- 
criminate method.  It  is  unfortunately  possible  for  a  25 
man  in  pursuit  of  truth  to  write  a  book  which  reposes 
upon  a  false  conception.  Even  the  practical  conse- 
quences of  a  book  are  to  genuine  criticism  no  recom- 
mendation of  it,  if  the  book  is,  in  the  highest  sense,- 

ind  the  higher  culture  to  attempt  to  inform  the  ignorant."  Need 
t  point  out  that  the  ignorant  are  not  informed  by  being  confirmed 
in  a  confusion  ? 


AT   THE  PRESENT    TIME.  29 

blundering.  I  see  that  a  lady  who  herself,  too,  is  in 
pursuit  of  truth,  and  who  writes  with  great  ability, 
hut  a  little  too  much,  perhaps,  under  the  influence  of 
(he  practical  spirit  of  the   English  liberal   movement, 

1  classes  Bishop  Colenso's  book  and  M.  Renan's 
together,  in  her  survey  of  the  religious  state  of 
Europe,  as  facts  of  the  same  order,  works,  both  of 
them,  of  "great  importance";  "great  ability,  power, 
and    skill";    Bishop    Colenso's,    perhaps,    the    most 

10  powerful;  at  least.  Miss  Cobbe  gives  special  expres- 
sion to  her  gratitude  that  to  Bishop  Colenso  "  has 
been  given  the  strength  to  grasp,  and  the  courage  to 
teach,  truths  of  such  deep  import."  In  the  same 
way,  more  than  one  popular  writer  has  compared  him 

>5  to  Luther.  Now  it  is  just  this  kind  of  false  estimate 
which  the  critical  spirit  is,  it  seems  to  me,  bound  to 
resist.  It  is  really  the  strongest  possible  proof  of  the 
low  ebb  at  which,  in  England,  the  critical  spirit  is, 
that   while  the  critical  hit  in  the  religious  literature 

20  of  Germany  is  Dr.  Strauss's  book,  in  that  of  France 
M.  Renan's  book,  the  book  of  Bishop  Colenso  is  the 
critical  hit  in  the  religious  literature  of  England. 
Bishop  Colenso's  book  reposes  on  a  total  misconcep- 
tion of  the  essential  elements  of  the  religious  problem, 

25  as  that  problem  is  now  presented  for  solution.  To 
criticism,  therefore,  which  seeks  to  have  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  on  this  problem,  it  is,  however 
well  meant,  of  no  importance  whatever.  M.  Renan's 
book    attempts    a    new    synthesis    of    the    elements 

30  furnished  to  us  by  the  Four  Gospels.  It  attempts, 
in  my  opinion,  a  synthesis,  perhaps  premature,  per- 
haps impossible,  certainly  not  successful.     Up  to  the 


3©  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

present  time,  at  any  rate,  we  must  acquiesce  in 
Fleury's  sentence  on  such  recastings  of  the  Gospel- 
story  :  Quiconqtte  s1  imagine  la  pouvoir  mieux  ecrire, 
7ie  Ventend  pas.  M.  Renan  had  himself  passed  by 
anticipation  a  like  sentence  on  his  own  work,  when  5 
he  said  :  "  If  a  new  presentation  of  the  character  of 
Jesus  were  offered  to  me,  I  would  not  have  it  ;  its 
very  clearness  would  be,  in  my  opinion,  the  best 
proof  of  its  insufficiency."  His  friends  may  with 
perfect  justice  rejoin  that  at  the  sight  of  the  Holy  10 
Land,  and  of  the  actual  scene  of  the  Gospel-story, 
all  the  current  of  M.  Renan's  thoughts  may  have 
naturally  changed,  and  a  new  casting  of  that  story 
irresistibly  suggested  itself  to  him  ;  and  that  this  is 
just  a  case  for  applying  Cicero's  maxim  :  Change  of  15 
mind  is  not  inconsistency — nemo  doctus  unquam  muta- 
tionem  consilii  inconstantiam  dixit  esse.  Nevertheless, 
for  criticism,  M.  Renan's  first  thought  must  still  be 
the  truer  one,  as  long  as  his  new  casting  so  fails  more 
fully  to  commend  itself,  more  fully  (to  use  Coleridge's  20 
happy  phrase  about  the  Bible)  to  find  us.  Still 
M.  Renan's  attempt  is,  for  criticism,  of  the  most  real 
interest  and  importance,  since,  with  all  its  difficulty, 
a  fresh  synthesis  of  the  New  Testament  data, — not  a 
making  war  on  them,  in  Voltaire's  fashion,  not  a  23 
leaving  them  out  of  mind,  in  the  world's  fashion,  but 
the  putting  a  new  construction  upon  them,  the  taking 
them  from  under  the  old,  traditional,  conventional 
point  of  view  and  placing  them  under  a  new  one, — 
is  the  very  essence  of  the  religious  problem,  as  now  30 
presented  ;  and  only  by  efforts  in  this  direction  can 
it  receive  a  solution. 


AT   THE  PRESENT    TIME.  3 1 

Again,  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  she  judges 
Bishop  Colenso,  Miss  Cobbe,  like  so  many  earnest 
liberals  of  our  practical  race,  both  here  and  in 
America,  herself  sets  vigorously  about  a  positive 
5  reconstruction  of  religion,  about  making  a  religion 
of  the  future  out  of  hand,  or  at  least  setting  about 
making  it.  We  must  not  rest,  she  and  they  are 
always  thinking  and  saying,  in  negative  criticism,  we 
must  be  creative  and   constructive  ;  hence  we  have 

10  such  works  as  her  recent  Religious  Duty,  and  works 
still  more  considerable,  perhaps,  by  others,  which  will 
be  in  every  one's  mind.  These  works  often  have 
much  ability  ;  they  often  spring  out  of  sincere  con- 
victions, and  a  sincere  wish   to  do  good  ;  and  they 

15  sometimes,  perhaps,  do  good.  Their  fault  is  (if  I 
may  be  permitted  to  say  so)  one  which  they  have  in 
common  with  the  British  College  of  Health,  in  the 
New  Road.  Every  one  knows  the  British  College  of 
Health  ;  it   is   that   building   with  the  lion    and    the 

20 statue  of  the  Goddess  Hygeia  before  it;  at  least 
I  am  sure  about  the  lion,  though  I  am  not  absolutely 
certain  about  the  Goddess  Hygeia.  This  building 
does  credit,  perhaps,  to  the  resources  of  Dr.  Morrison 
and   his  disciples  ;  but  it  falls  a  good  deal  short  of 

25  one's  idea  of  what  a  British  College  of  Health  ought 
to  be.  In  England,  where  we  hate  public  inter- 
ference and  love  individual  enterprise,  we  have  a 
whole  crop  of  places  like  the  British  College  of 
Health  ;  the  grand    name  without   the   grand  thing. 

30  Unluckily,  creditable  to  individual  enterprise  as  they 
are,  they  tend  to  impair  our  taste  by  making  us  for- 
get what  more  grandiose,  noble,  or  beautiful  characfer 


32  THE  FUNCTION  OF  CRITICISM 

properly  belongs  to  a  public  institution.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  religions  of  the  future  of  Miss 
Cobbe  and  others.  Creditable,  like  the  British  Col- 
lege of  Health,  to  the  resources  of  their  authors,  they 
yet  tend  to  make  us  forget  what  more  grandiose,  5 
noble,  or  beautiful  character  properly  belongs  to 
religious  constructions.  The  historic  religions,  with 
all  their  faults,  have  had  this  ;  it  certainly  belongs 
to  the  religious  sentiment,  when  it  truly  flowers,  to 
have  this  ;  and  we  impoverish  our  spirit  if  we  allow  10 
a  religion  of  the  future  without  it.  What  then  is  the 
duty  of  criticism  here  ?  To  take  the  practical  point 
of  view,  to  applaud  the  liberal  movement  and  all  its 
works, — its  New  Road  religions  of  the  future  into  the 
bargain, — for  their  general  utility's  sake  ?  By  no  15 
means ;  but  to  be  perpetually  dissatisfied  with  these 
works,  while  they  perpetually  fall  short  of  a  high 
and  perfect  ideal. 

For  criticism,  these  are  elementary  laws  ;  but  they 
never  can  be  popular,  and  in  this  country  they  have  20 
been  very  little  followed,  and  one  meets  with  immense 
obstacles  in  following  them.     That  is  a  reason  for 
asserting    them    again    and    again.     Criticism    must 
maintain  its  independence  of  the  practical  spirit  and 
its  aims.     Even  with  well-meant  efforts  of  the  practi-  25 
cal  spirit  it   must    express    dissatisfaction,  if   in    the 
sphere   of    the   ideal   they   seem   impoverishing   and 
limiting.     It  must  not  hurry  on  to  the  goal  because 
of  its  practical  importance.     It  must  be  patient,  and 
know  how  to  wait  ;  and   flexible,  and  know  how   to  30 
attach   itself   to   things    and    how  to  withdraw   from 
them.     It  must  be  apt  to  study  and  praise  elements 


AT   THE   PRESENT    TIME.  33 

that  for  the  fulness  of  spiritual  perfection  are  wanted, 
even  though  they  belong  to  a  power  which  in  the 
practical  sphere  may  be  maleficent.  It  must  be  apt 
to  discern  the  spiritual  shortcomings  or  illusions  of 
5  powers  that  in  the  practical  sphere  may  be  beneficent. 
And  this  without  any  notion  of  favouring  or  injur- 
ing, in  the  practical  sphere,  one  power  or  the  other ; 
without  any  notion  of  playing  off,  in  this  sphere, 
one  power  against    the  other.     When  one  looks,  for 

10  instance,  at  the  English  Divorce  Court, — an  institu- 
tion which  perhaps  has  its  practical  conveniences, 
but  which  in  the  ideal  sphere  is  so  hideous ;  an 
institution  which  neither  makes  divorce  impossible 
nor  makes   it  decent,  which  allows  a   man  to  get  rid 

15  of  his  wife,  or  a  wife  of  her  husband,  but  makes  them 
drag  one  another  first,  for  the  public  edification, 
through  a  mire  of  unutterable  infamy, — when  one 
looks  at  this  charming  institution,  I  say,  with  its 
crowded  trials,  its  newspaper  reports,  and   its  money 

20  compensations,  this  institution  in  which  the  gross 
unregenerate  British  Philistine  has  indeed  stamped 
an  image  of  himself, — one  may  be  permitted  to  find 
the  marriage  theory  of  Catholicism  refreshing  and 
elevating.     Or  when    Protestantism,  in  virtue  of   its 

25  supposed  rational  and  intellectual  origin,  gives  the 
law  to  criticism  too  magisterially,  criticism  may  and 
must  remind  it  that  its  pretensions,  in  this  respect,  are 
illusive  and  do  it  harm  ;  that  the  Reformation  was  a 
moral  rather  than  an  intellectual  event ;  that  Luther's 

30  theory  of  grace  no  more  exactly  reflects  the  mind  of 
the  spirit  than  Bossuet's  philosophy  of  history  reflects 
it ;  and  that  there  is  no  more  antecedent  probability 


34  THE  FUNCTION  OF   CRITICISM 

of  the  Bishop  of  Durham's  stock  of  ideas  being  agree- 
able to  perfect  reason  than  of  Pope  Pius  the  Ninth's. 
But  criticism  will  not  on  that  account  forget  the 
achievements  of  Protestantism  in  the  practical  and 
moral  sphere ;  nor  that,  even  in  the  intellectual  5 
sphere,  Protestantism,  though  in  a  blind  and  stumb- 
ling manner,  carried  forward  the  Renascence,  while 
Catholicism  threw  itself  violently  across  its  path. 

I  lately  heard  a  man  of  thought  and  energy  contrast- 
ing the  want  of  ardour  and  movement  which  he  now  ia 
found  amongst  young  men  in  this  country  with  what 
he  remembered  in  his  own  youth,  twenty  years  ago. 
"What    reformers    we   were    then!"    he    exclaimed; 
"what  a  zeal  we  had  !  how  we  canvassed  every  insti- 
tution in   Church  and   State,   and   were   prepared   to  15 
remodel    them    all    on    first    principles  !  "       He   was 
inclined  to  regret,  as  a  spiritual  flagging,  the  lull  which 
he  saw.     I  am  disposed  rather  to  regard  it  as  a  pause 
in  which  the  turn  to  a  new  mode  of  spiritual  progress 
is  being  accomplished.     Everything  was  long  seen,  by  20 
the  young  and  ardent  amongst  us,  in  inseparable  con- 
nection  with    politics   and    practical   life.     We   have 
pretty  well  exhausted  the  benefits  of  seeing  things  in 
this  connection,  we  have  got  all  that  can  be  got  by  so 
seeing  them.     Let  us  try  a  more  disinterested  mode  of  25 
seeing  them  ;  let  us   betake   ourselves   more   to   the 
serener  life  of  the  mind  and  spirit.     This  life,  too, 
may  have  its  excesses  and  dangers  ;  but  they  are  not 
for  us  at  present.     Let  us  think  of  quietly  enlarging 
our  stock  of  true  and  fresh  ideas,  and  not,  as  soon  as  30 
we  get  an  idea  or  half  an  idea,  be  running  out  with  it 
into  the  street,  and  trying  to  make  it  rule  there.     Our 


AT   THE  PRESENT   TIME.  35 

ideas  will,  in  the  end,  shape  the  world  all  the  better 
for  maturing  a  little.  Perhaps  in  fifty  years'  time  it 
will  in  the  English  House  of  Commons  be  an  objec- 
tion to  an  institution  that  it  is  an  anomaly,  and  my 
5  friend  the  Member  of  Parliament  will  shudder  in  his 
grave.  But  let  us  in  the  meanwhile  rather  endeavour 
that  in  twenty  years' time  it  may,  in  English  literature, 
b.e  an  objection  to  a  proposition  that  it  is  absurd. 
That  will  be  a  change  so  vast,  that  the  imagination 

10  almost  fails  to  grasp  it.  Ab  iniegro  scedorum  nascitur 
ordo. 

If  I  have  insisted  so  much  on  the  course  which 
criticism  must  take  where  politics  and  religion  are 
concerned,  it  is  because,  where  these  burning  matters 

15  are  in  question,  it  is  most  likely  to  go  astray.  I 
have  wished,  above  all,  to  insist  on  the  attitude  which 
criticism  should  adopt  towards  things  in  general  ;  on 
its  right  tone  and  temper  of  mind.  But  then  comes 
another  question  as  to  the  subject-matter  which  literary 

20  criticism  should  most  seek.  Here,  in  general,  its 
course  is  determined  for  it  by  the  idea  which  is  the 
law  of  its  being  ;  the  idea  of  a  disinterested  endeavour 
to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and 
thought  in  the  world,  and  thus  to  establish  a  current 

25  of  fresh  and  true  ideas.  By  the  very  nature  of  things, 
as  England  is  not  all  the  world,  much  of  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  world  cannot  be  of 
English  growth,  must  be  foreign  ;  by  the  nature  of 
things,  again,  it  is  just  this  that  we  are  least  likely  to 

30 know,  while  English  thought  is  streaming  in  upon  us 
from  all  sides,  and  takes  excellent  care  that  we  shall 
not  be  ignorant  of  its  existence.     The  English  critic 


3<5  THE  FUNCTION   OF  CRITICISM 

of  literature,  therefore,  must  dwell  much  on  foreign 
thought,  and  with  particular  heed  on  any  part  of  it, 
which,  while  significant  and  fruitful  in  itself,  is  for  any 
reason  specially  likely  to  escape  him.  Again,  judging 
is  often  spoken  of  as  the  critic's  one  business,  and  so  5 
in  some  sense  it  is  ;  but  the  judgment  which  almost 
insensibly  forms  itself  in  a  fair  and  clear  mind,  along 
with  fresh  knowledge,  is  the  valuable  one  ;  and  thus 
knowledge,  and  ever  fresh  knowledge,  must  be  the 
critic's  great  concern  for  himself.  And  it  is  by  com-  10 
municating  fresh  knowledge,  and  letting  his  own  judg- 
ment pass  along  with  it, — but  insensibly,  and  in  the 
second  place,  not  the  first,  as  a  sort  of  companion  and 
clue,  not  as  an  abstract  lawgiver, — that  the  critic  will 
generally  do  most  good  to  his  readers.  Sometimes,  ij 
no  doubt,  for  the  sake  of  establishing  an  author's  place 
in  literature,  and  his  relation  to  a  central  standard 
(and  if  this  is  not  done,  how  are  we  to  get  at  our  best 
in  the  world?)  criticism  may  have  to  deal  with  a  sub- 
ject-matter so  familiar  that  fresh  knowledge  is  out  of  20 
the  question,  and  then  it  must  be  all  judgment ;  an 
enunciation  and  detailed  application  of  principles. 
Here  the  great  safeguard  is  never  to  let  oneself  become 
abstract,  always  to  retain  an  intimate  and  lively  con- 
sciousness of  the  truth  of  what  one  is  saying,  and,  the  25 
moment  this  fails  us,  to  be  sure  that  something  is 
wrong.  Still,  under  all  circumstances,  this  mere  judg- 
ment and  application  of  principles  is,  in  itself,  not  the 
most  satisfactory  work  to  the  critic  ;  like  mathematics, 
it  is  tautological,  and  cannot  well  give  us,  like  fresh  50 
learning,  the  sense  of  creative  activity. 

But  stop,  some  one  will  say  ;  all  this  talk  is  of  no 


IO 


AT    THE  PRESENT    TIME.  37 

practical  use  to  us  whatever  ;  this  criticism  of  yours 
is  not  what  we  have  in  our  minds  when  we  speak  of 
criticism  ;  when  we  speak  of  critics  and  criticism,  we 
mean  critics  and  criticism  of  the  current  English 
5  literature  of  the  day  ;  when  you  offer  to  tell  criticism 
its  function,  it  is  to  this  criticism  that  we  expect  you 
to  address  yourself.  I  am  sorry  for  it,  for  I  am  afraid 
I  must  disappoint  these  expectations.  I  am  bound  by 
my  own  definition  of  criticism  :(a  disinterested  endea- 
vour to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and 
thought  in  the  world.  J  How  much  of  current  English 
literature  comes  into  this  "best  that  is  known  and 
thought  in  the  world  ? "  Not  very  much,  I  fear 
certainly  less,   at   this  moment,   than   of  the  currem. 

15  literature  of  France  or  Germany.  Well,  then,  am  I  to 
alter  my  definition  of  criticism,  in  order  to  meet  the 
requirements  of  a  number  of  practising  English  critics, 
who,  after  all,  are  free  in  their  choice  of  a  business? 
That  would  be  making  criticism  lend  itself  just  to  one 

20  of  those  alien  practical  considerations,  which,  I  have 
said,  are  so  fatal  to  it.  One  may  say,  indeed,  to  those 
who  have  to  deal  with  the  mass — so  much  better  dis- 
regarded— of  current  English  literature,  that  they  may 
at  all  events  endeavour,  in  dealing  with  this,  to  try  it, 

25  so  far  as  they  can,  by  the  standard  of  the  best  that  is 
known  and  thought  in  the  world  ;  one  may  say,  that 
to  get  anywhere  near  this  standard,  every  critic  should 
try  and  possess  one  great  literature,  at  least,  besides 
his   own,  and  the  more  unlike    his  own,  the  better. 

30  But,  after  all,  the  criticism  I  am  really  concerned 
with, — the  criticism  which  alone  can  much  help  us 
for  the  future,  the  criticism  which,  throughout  Europe, 


38  THE   FUNCTION  CF  CRITICISM 

is  at  the  present  day  meant,  when  so  much  stress  is 
laid  on  the  importance  of  criticism  and  the  critical 
spirit, — is  a  criticism  which  regards  Europe  as  being, 
for  intellectual  and  spiritual  purposes,  one  great  con- 
federation, bound  to  a  joint  action  and  working  to  a  5 
common  result  ;  and  whose  members  have,  for  their 
proper  outfit,  a  knowledge  of  Greek,  Roman,  and 
Eastern  antiquity,  and  of  one  another.  Special,  local, 
and  temporary  advantages  being  put  out  of  account, 
that  modern  nation  will  in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  10 
sphere  make  most  progress,  which  most  thoroughly 
carries  out  this  programme.  And  what  is  that  but 
saying  that  we  too,  all  of  us,  as  individuals,  the  more 
thoroughly  we  carry  it  out,  shall  make  the  more 
progress  ?  15 

There  is  so  much  inviting  us  ! — what  are  we  to 
take  ?  what  will  nourish  us  in  growth  towards  perfec- 
tion ?  That  is  the  question  which,  with  the  immense 
field  of  life  and  of  literature  lying  before  him,  the  critic 
has  to  answer  ;  for  himself  first,  and  afterwards  for  20 
others.  In  this  idea  of  the  critic's  business  the  essays 
brought  together  in  the  following  pages  have  had  their 
origin  ;  in  this  idea,  widely  different  as  are  their  sub- 
jects, they  have,  perhaps,  their  unity. 

I  conclude  with  what  I  said  at  the  beginning  :  to  25 
have  the  sense  of  creative  activity  is  the  great  happi- 
ness and  the  great  proof  of  being  alive,  and  it  is  not 
denied  to  criticism  to  have  it  ;  but  then  criticism  must 
be  sincere,  simple,  flexible,  ardent,  ever  widening  its 
knowledge.  Then  it  may  have,  in  no  contemptible  3a 
measure,  a  joyful  sense  of  creative  activity  ;  a  sense 
which  a  man  of  insight  and  conscience  will  prefer  to 


AT   THE   PRESENT    TIME.  39 

what  he  might  derive  from  a  poor,  starved,  fragmen- 
tary, inadequate  creation.  And  at  some  epochs  no 
other  creation  is  possible. 

Still,  in  full  measure,  the  sense  of  creative  activity 

5 belongs  only  to  genuine  creation;  in  literature  we 
must  never  forget  that.  But  what  true  man  of  letters 
ever  can  forget  it  ?  It  is  no  such  common  matter  for 
a  gifted  nature  to  come  into  possession  of  a  current 
of  true  and  living  ideas,  and  to  produce  amidst  the 

10  inspiration  of  them,  that  we  are  likely  to  underrate  it. 
The  epochs  of  yEschylus  and  Shakspeare  make  us 
feel  their  pre-eminence.  In  an  epoch  like  those  is,  no 
doubt,  the  true  life  of  literature  ;  there  is  the  promised 
land,  towards  which  criticism  can  only  beckon.     That 

15  promised  land  it  will  not  be  ours  to  enter,  and  we 
shall  die  in  the  wilderness  ;  but  to  have  desired  to 
enter  it,  to  have  saluted  it  from  afar,  is  already,  per- 
haps, the  best  distinction  among  contemporaries  ;  it 
will  certainly  be  the  best  title  to  esteem  with  pos- 
terity.— Essays,  I,,  ed.  1896,  pp.  1-41. 


®n  {Translating  Ibomer. 

.    .    .    Nunquamne  reponam  ? 

It  has  more  than  once  been  suggested  to  me  that  I 
should  translate  Homer.  That  is  a  task  for  which  I 
have  neither  the  time  nor  the  courage  ;  but  the  sug- 
gestion led  me  to  regard  yet  more  closely  a  poet  whom 
I  had  already  long  studied,  and  for  one  or  two  years  5 
the  works  of  Homer  were  seldom  out  of  my  hands. 
The  study  of  classical  literature  is  probably  on  the 
decline  ;  but,  whatever  may  be  the  fate  of  this  study 
in  general,  it  is  certain  that,  as  instruction  spreads  and 
the  number  of  readers  increases,  attention  will  be  10 
more  and  more  directed  to  the  poetry  of  Homer,  not 
indeed  as  part  of  a  classical  course,  but  as  the  most 
important  poetical  monument  existing.  Even  within 
the  last  ten  years  two  fresh  translations  of  the  Iliad 
have  appeared  in  England  :  one  by  a  man  of  great  15 
ability  and  genuine  learning,  Professor  Newman  ;  the 
other  by  Mr.  Wright,  the  conscientious  and  painstak- 
ing translator  of  Dante.  It  may  safely  be  asserted 
that  neither  of  these  works  will  take  rank  as  the 
standard  translation  of  Homer;  that  the  task  of 20 
rendering  him  will  still  be  attempted  by  other  trans- 
lators. It  may  perhaps  be  possible  to  render  to  these 
some  service,  to  save  them  some  loss  of  labour,  by 
pointing  out  rocks  on  which  their  predecessors  have 

40 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  4* 

split,  and   the   right  objects  on  which  a  translator  of 
Homer  should  fix  his  attention. 

It  is  disputed  what  aim  a  translator  should  propose 
to   himself  in  dealing  with  his  original.     Even    this 

5  preliminary  is  not  yet  settled.  On  one  side  it  is  said 
that  the  translation  ought  to  be  such  "  that  the  reader 
should,  if  possible,  forget  that  it  is  a  translation  at  all, 
and  be  lulled  into  the  illusion  that  he  is  reading  an 
original  work — something  original  "  (if  the  translation 

10 be  in  English),  "from  an  English  hand."  The  real 
original  is  in  this  case,  it  is  said,  "  taken  as  a  basis  on 
which  to  rear  a  poem  that  shall  affect  our  countrymen 
as  the  original  may  be  conceived  to  have  affected  its 
natural  hearers."     On   the  other  hand,  Mr.  Newman, 

15  who  states  the  foregoing  doctrine  only  to  condemn  it, 
declares  that  he  "  aims  at  precisely  the  opposite:  to 
retain  every  peculiarity  of  the  original,  so  far  as  he  is 
able,  with  the  greater  care  the  more  foreign  it  may 
happen  to  be  ";  so   that   it  may  "  never  be  forgotten 

2othat  he  is  imitating,  and  imitating  in  a  different 
material."  The  translator's  "  first  duty,"  says  Mr. 
Newman,  "  is  a  historical  one,  to  be  faithful" 
Probably  both  sides  would  agree  that  the  translator's 
"first  duty  is  to  be   faithful'";    but  the  question  at 

25  issue  between  them  is,  in  what  faithfulness  consists. 
My  one  object  is  to  give  practical  advice  to  a  trans- 
lator ;  and  I  shall  not  the  least  concern  myself  with 
theories   of    translation    as   such.     But  I  advise    the 
translator  not  to  try  "  to  rear  on  the  basis  of  the  Iliad, 

30  a  poem  that  shall  affect  our  countrymen  as  the 
original  may  be  conceived  to  have  affected  its  natural 
hearers  ";  and  for  this  simple  reason,  that  we  cannot 


42  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

possibly  tell  how  the  Iliad  "affected  its  natural 
hearers."  It  is  probably  meant  merely  that  he  should 
try  to  affect  Englishmen  powerfully,  as  Homer  affected 
Greeks  powerfully  ;  but  this  direction  is  not  enough, 
and  can  give  no  real  guidance.  For  all  great  poets  5 
affect  their  hearers  powerfully,  but  the  effect  of  one 
poet  is  one  thing,  that  of  another  poet  another  thing  ; 
it  is  our  translator's  business  to  reproduce  the  effect 
of  Homer,  and  the  most  powerful  emotion  of  the 
unlearned  English  reader  can  never  assure  him  10 
whether  he  has  reproduced  this,  or  whether  he  has 
produced  something  else.  So,  again,  he  may  follow 
Mr.  Newman's  directions,  he  may  try  to  be  ''faithful," 
he  may  "retain  every  peculiarity  of  his  original"; 
but  who  is  to  assure  him,  who  is  to  assure  Mr.  New- 15 
man  himself,  that,  when  he  has  done  this,  he  has  done 
that  for  which  Mr.  Newman  enjoins  this  to  be  done, 
"  adhered  closely  to  Homer's  manner  and  habit  of 
thought"  ?  Evidently  the  translator  needs  some  more 
practical  directions  than  these.  No  one  can  tell  him  20 
how  Homer  affected  the  Greeks  :  but  there  are  those 
who  can  tell  him  how  Homer  affects  them.  These  are 
scholars  ;  who  possess,  at  the  same  time  with  knowl- 
edge of  Greek,  adequate  poetical  taste  and  feeling. 
No  translation  will  seem  to  them  of  much  worth  com-  25 
pared  with  the  original  ;  but  they  alone  can  say 
whether  the  translation  produces  more  or  less  the 
same  effect  upon  them  as  the  original.  They  are  the 
only  competent  tribunal  in  this  matter  :  the  Greeks 
are  dead  ;  the  unlearned  Englishman  has  not  the  data  30 
for  judging  ;  and  no  man  can  safely  confide  in  his 
own  single  judgment  of  his  own   work.     Let  not  the 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  43 

translator,  then,  trust  to  his  notions  of  what  the 
ancient  Greeks  would  have  thought  of  him  ;  he  will 
lose  himself  in  the  vague.  Let  him  not  trust  to  what 
the  ordinary   English  reader  thinks  of  him  ;  he  will 

5  be  taking  the  blind  for  his  guide.  Let  him  not  trust 
to  his  own  judgment  of  his  own  work  ;  he  may  be 
misled  by  individual  caprices.  Let  him  ask  how  his 
work  affects  those  who  both  know  Greek  and  can 
appreciate  poetry  ;  whether  to  read  it  gives  the  Pro- 

iovost  of  Eton,  or  Professor  Thompson  at  Cambridge, 
or  Professor  Jowett  here  in  Oxford,  at  all  the  same 
feeling  which  to  read  the  original  gives  them.  I  con- 
sider that  when  Bentley  said  of  Pope's  translation, 
"  It  was    a  pretty    poem,  but    must    not  be    called 

15  Homer,"  the  work,  in  spite  of  all  its  power  and 
attractiveness,  was  judged. 

'fis  av  6  (frpovinos  opLaucv, — "as  the  judicious  would 
determine," — that  is  a  test  to  which  every  one  pro- 
fesses himself  willing  to  submit  his  works.     Unhappily, 

20 in  most  cases,  no  two  persons  agree  as  to  who  "the 
judicious  "  are.  In  the  present  case,  the  ambiguity 
is  removed  :  I  suppose  the  translator  at  one  with  me 
as  to  the  tribunal  to  which  alone  he  should  look  for 
judgment  ;  and  he  has  thus  obtained   a  practical  test 

25  by  which  to  estimate  the  real  success  of  his  work. 
How  is  he  to  proceed,  in  order  that  his  work,  tried 
by  this  test,  may  be  found  most  successful  ? 

First  of  all,  there  are  certain  negative  counsels 
which  I  will  give  him.     Homer  has  occupied  men's 

30  minds  so  much,  such  a  literature  has  arisen  about 
him,  that  every  one  who  approaches  him  should 
resolve   strictly   to   limit   himself  to  that  which  may 


44  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

directly  serve  the  object  for  which  he  approaches 
him.  I  advise  the  translator  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  questions,  whether  Homer  ever  existed  ; 
whether  the  poet  of  the  Iliad  be  one  or  many  ; 
whether  the  Iliad  be  one  poem  or  an  Achilleis  and  an  5 
Iliad  stuck  together  ;  whether  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  Atonement  is  shadowed  forth  in  the  Homeric 
mythology  ;  whether  the  Goddess  Latona  in  any  way 
prefigures  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  so  on.  These  are 
questions  which  have  been  discussed  with  learning,  10 
with  ingenuity,  nay,  with  genius  ;  but  they  have  two 
inconveniences, — one  general  for  all  who  approach 
them,  one  particular  for  the  translator.  The  general 
inconvenience  is  that  there  really  exist  no  data  for 
determining  them.  The  particular  inconvenience  is  15 
that  their  solution  by  the  translator,  even  were  it 
possible,  could  be  of  no  benefit  to  his  transla- 
tion. 

I  advise  him,  again,  not   to    trouble   himself   with 
constructing  a  special  vocabulary  for  his  use  in  trans- 20 
lation  ;    with    excluding   a    certain    class  of  English 
words,  and  with  confining  himself  to  another  class,  in 
obedience  to  any  theory  about  the  peculiar  qualities 
of  Homer's  style.     Mr.  Newman  says  that  "  the  entire 
dialect  of  Homer  being  essentially  archaic,  that  of  a  25 
translator   ought    to   be    as    much    Saxo-Norman    as 
possible,  and  owe  as  little  as  possible  to  the  elements 
thrown  into  our  language  by  classical  learning."     Mr. 
Newman  is  unfortunate  in  the  observance  of  his  own 
theory  ;  for  I  continually  find  in  his  translation  words  30 
of  Latin  origin,  which   seem  to  me  quite  alien  to  the 
simplicity    of     Homer, — '"  responsive,"    for   instance, 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  45 

which  is  a  favourite  word  of  Mr.  Newman,  to  repre* 
sent  the  Homeric  d/x.et/3o'/A£vos  : — 

"  Great  Hector  of  the  motley  helm  thus  spake  to  her  responsive* 
"  But  thus  responsively  to  him  spake  god-like  Alexander." 

5  And  the  word  "  celestial,"  again,  in  the  grand  address 
of  Zeus  to  the  horses  of  Achilles, 

"  You,  who  are  born  celestial,  from  Eld  and  Death  exempted  !  " 

seems  to  me  in  that  place  exactly  to  jar  upon  the 
feeling  as  too  bookish.     But,  apart  from  the  question 

roof  Mr.  "Newman's  fidelity  to  his  own  theory,  such  a 
theory  seems  to  me  both  dangerous  for  a  translator 
and  false  in  itself.  Dangerous  for  a  translator ; 
because,  wherever  one  finds  such  a  theory  announced 
(and  one  finds  it  pretty  often),  it  is  generally  followed 

15  by  an  explosion  of  pedantry;  and  pedantry  is  of  all 
things  in  the  world  the  most  un-Homeric.  False  in 
itself;  because,  in  fact,  we  owe  to  the  Latin  element 
in  our  language  most  of  that  very  rapidity  and  clear 
decisiveness  by   which  it  is  contradistinguished  from 

20  the  German,  and  in  sympathy  with  the  languages  of 
Greece  and  Rome  :  so  that  to  limit  an  English  trans- 
lator of  Homer  to  words  of  Saxon  origin  is  to  deprive 
him  of  one  of  his  special  advantages  for  translating 
Homer.     In  Voss's  well-known  translation  of  Homer, 

25  it  is  precisely  the  qualities  of  his  German  language 
itself,  something  heavy  and  trailing  both  in  the  struc- 
ture of  its  sentences  and  in  the  words  of  which  it  is 
composed,  which  prevent  his  translation,  in  spite  of 
the  hexameters,  in  spite  of  the  fidelity,  from  creating 

30  in    us    the    impression    created   by  the   Greek.     Mr. 


46  ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

Newman's  prescription,  if  followed,  would  just  strip 
the  English  translator  of  the  advantage  which  he  has 
over  Voss. 

The  frame  of  mind  in  which  we  approach  an  author 
influences  our  correctness  of  appreciation  of  him  ;  and  5 
Homer  should  be  approached  by  a  translator  in  the 
simplest  frame  of  mind  possible.  Modern  sentiment 
tries  to  make  the  ancient  not  less  than  the  modern 
world  its  own  ;  but  against  modern  sentiment  in  its 
applications  to  Homer  the  translator,  if  he  would  feel  10 
Homer  truly — and  unless  he  feels  him  truly,  how  can 
he  render  him  truly  ? — cannot  be  too  much  on  his 
guard.  For  example  :  the  writer  of  an  interesting 
article  on  English  translations  of  Homer,  in  the  last 
number  of  the  National  Review  y  quotes,  I  see,  with  15 
admiration,  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Ruskin  on  the  use  of 
the  epithet  4>vo-i£oo<>,  "life-giving,"  in  that  beautiful 
passage  in  the  third  book  of  the  Iliad,  which  follows 
Helen's  mention  of  her  brothers  Castor  and  Pollux 
as  alive,  though  they  were  in  truth  dead  : —  2G 

ois  <p6.ro  •  toi)s  5'  tfSr)  Karixev  ^fc/foos  ala 
iv  AaKedaifiovi  adOi,  <pi\y  iv  Trarpidi  yalrj.  ' 

"The  poet,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "has  to  speak  of  the 
earth  in  sadness  ;  but  he  will  not  let  that  sadness 
affect  or  change  his  thought  of  it.  No  ;  though  25 
Castor  and  Pollux  be  dead,  yet  the  earth  is  our 
mother  still — fruitful,  life-giving."  This  is  a  just 
specimen  of  that  sort  of  application  of  modern  senti- 
ment to  the  ancients,  against  which  a  student,  who 
wishes  to  feel  the  ancients  truly,  cannot  too  resolutely  30 

1  Iliari,  iii.  243. 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER.  47 

defend  himself.  It  reminds  one,  as,  alas  !  so  much 
of  Mr.  Ruskin's  writing  reminds  one,  of  those  words 
of  the  most  delicate  of  living  critics  :  "  Comnie  tout 
genre  de  composition  a  son  ecueil  particulier,  cclui  du 

5 genre  romanesque,  c' est  le  faux."  The  reader  may  feel 
moved  as  he  reads  it  •.  but  it  is  not  the  less  an  ex- 
ample of  "le  faux  "  in  criticism  ;  it  is  false.  It  is  not 
true,  as  to  that  particular  passage,  that  Homer  called 
the  earth  </>vcrt£oos,  because,  "  though  he  had  to  speak 

ioof  the  earth  in  sadness,  he  would  not  let  that  sadness 
change  or  affect  his  thought  of  it,"  but  consoled  him- 
self by  considering  that  "  the  earth  is  our  mother 
still — fruitful,  life-giving."  It  is  not  true,  as  a 
matter  of  general   criticism,  that  this  kind  of  senti- 

15  mentality,  eminently  modern,  inspires  Homer  at  all. 
"  From  Homer  and  Polygnotus  I  every  day  learn 
more  clearly,"  says  Goethe,  "  that  in  our  life  here 
above  ground  we  have,  properly  speaking,  to  enact 
Hell":2 — if  the  student  must  absolutely  have  a  key- 

conote  to  the  Iliad,  let  him  take  this  of  Goethe,  and  see 
what  he  can  do  with  it  ;  it  will  not,  at  any  rate,  like 
the  tender  pantheism  of  Mr.  Ruskin,  falsify  for  him 
the  whole  strain  of  Homer. 

These  are  negative  counsels  ;  I  come  to  the  posi- 

25  tive.  When  I  say,  the  translator  of  Homer  should 
above  all  be  penetrated  by  a  sense  of  four  qualities  of 
his  author  ;  that  he  is  eminently  rapid  ;  that  he  is 
eminently  plain  and  direct,  both  in  the  evolution  of 
his  thought  and  in  the  expression  of  it,  that  is,  both 

30  in  his  syntax  and  in  his  words  ;  that  he  is  eminently 
plain  and  direct  in  the  substance  of  his  thought,  that 
2  Brief wechsel  zwischen  Schiller  und  Goethe,  vi.  230. 


48  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

is,  in  his  matter  and  ideas  ;  and,  finally,  that  he  is 
eminently  noble  ; — I  probably  seem  to  be  saying  what 
is  too  general  to  be  of  much  service  to  anybody.  Yet 
it  is  strictly  true  that,  for  want  of  duly  penetrating 
themselves  with  the  first-named  quality  of  Homer, : 
his  rapidity,  Cowper  and  Mr.  Wright  have  failed  in 
rendering  him  :  that,  for  want  of  duly  appreciating 
the  second-named  quality,  his  plainness  and  directness 
of  style  and  diction,  Pope  and  Mr.  Sotheby  have 
failed  in  rendering  him  ;  that  for  want  of  appreciating  ic 
the  third,  his  plainness  and  directness  of  ideas,  Chap- 
man has  failed  in  rendering  him  ;  while  for  want  of 
appreciating  the  fourth,  his  nobleness,  Mr.  Newman, 
who  has  clearly  seen  some  of  the  faults  of  his  prede- 
cessors, has  yet  failed  more  conspicuously  than  any  of  15 
them. 

Coleridge  says,  in  his  strange  language,  speaking 
of  the  union  of  the  human  soul  with  the  divine 
essence,  that  this  takes  place 

"  Whene'er  the  mist,  which  stands  'tvvixt  God  and  thee,  20 

Defecates  to  a  pure  transparency  ;  " 

and  so,  too,  it  may  be  said  of  that  union  of  the  trans- 
lator with  his  original,  which  alone  can  produce  a 
good  translation,  that  it  takes  place  when  the  mist 
which  stands  between  them — the  mist  of  alien  modes  25 
of  thinking,  speaking,  and  feeling  on  the  translator's 
part — "  defecates  to  a  pure  transparency,"  and  dis- 
appears. But  between  Cowper  and  Homer — (Mr. 
JVright  repeats  in  the  main  Cowper's  manner,  as 
Mr.  Sotheby  repeats  Pope's  manner,  and  neither  Mr.  30 
Wright's  translation  nor  Mr.  Sotheby's   has,  I    must 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  49 

be  forgiven  for  saying,  any  proper  reason  for  existing) 
— between  Cowper  and  Homer  there  is  interposed  the 
mist  of  Cowper's  elaborate  Miltonic  manner,  entirely 
alien  to  the  flowing  rapidity  of  Homer  ;  between  Pope 
5  and  Homer  there  is  interposed  the  mist  of  Pope's 
literary  artificial  manner,  entirely  alien  to  the  plain 
naturalness  of  Homer's  manner ;  between  Chapman 
and  Homer  there  is  interposed  the  mist  of  the  fanci- 
fulness  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  entirely  alien  to  the 

10 plain  directness  of  Homer's  thought  and  feeling; 
while  between  Mr.  Newman  and  Homer  is  interposed 
a  cloud  of  more  than  Egyptian  thickness — namely,  a 
manner,  in  Mr.  Newman's  version,  eminently  ignoble, 
while  Homer's  manner  is  eminently  noble. 

is      I  do  not  despair  of  making  all  these  propositions 
clear  to  a  student  who  approaches  Homer  with  a  free 
mind.     First,  Homer  is  eminently  rapid,  and  to  this. 
rapidity  the  elaborate   movement  of    Miltonic    blank 
verse  is  alien.     The  reputation  of  Cowper,  that  most 

20  interesting  man  and  excellent  poet,  does  not  depend 
on  his  translation  of  Homer  ;  and  in  his  preface  to 
the  second  edition,  he  himself  tells  us  that  he  felt, — 
he  had  too  much  poetical  taste  not  to  feel, — on  re- 
turning to  his  own  version  after  six  or  seven  years, 

25 "  more  dissatisfied  with  it  himself  than  the  most 
difficult  to  be  pleased  of  all  his  judges."  And  he  was 
dissatisfied  with  it  for  the  right  reason, — that  "  it 
seemed  to  him  deficient  in  the  grace  of  ease."  Yet  he 
seems  to  have  originally  misconceived  the  manner  of 

30  Homer  so  much,  that  it  is  no  wonder  he  rendered 
him  amiss.  "  The  similitude  of  Milton's  manner  to 
that  of  Homer  is  such,"  he  says,  "  that  no  person 


50  ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

familiar  with  both  can  read  either  without  being  re- 
minded of  the  other  ;  and  it  is  in  those  breaks  and 
pauses  to  which  the  numbers  of  the  English  poet  are 
so  much  indebted,  both  for  their  dignity  and  variety, 
that  he  chiefly  copies  the  Grecian."  It  would  be  5 
more  true  to  say  :  "  The  unlikeness  of  Milton's 
manner  to  that  of  Homer  is  such,  that  no  person 
familiar  with  both  can  read  either  without  being 
struck  with  his  difference  from  the  other  ;  and  it  is 
in  his  breaks  and  pauses  that  the  English  poet  is  ia 
most  unlike  the  Grecian." 

The  inversion  and  pregnant  conciseness  of  Milton 
or  Dante  are,  doubtless,  most  impressive  qualities  of 
style  ;  but  they  are  the  very  opposites  of  the  direct- 
ness and  flovvingness  of  Homer,  which  he  keeps  alike  15 
in  passages  of  the  simplest  narrative,  and  in  those  of 
the  deepest  emotion.  Not  only,  for  example,  are 
these  lines  of  Cowper  un-Homeric  : — 

"  So  numerous  seemed  those  fires  the  banks  between 

Of  Xanthus,  blazing,  and  the  fleet  of  Greece  20 

In  prospect  all  of  Troy  ;  " 

where  the  position  of  the  word  "blazing"  gives  an 
entirely  un-Homeric  movement  to  this  simple  passage, 
describing  the  fires  of  the  Trojan  camp  outside  of 
Troy  ;  but  the  following  lines,  in  that  very  highly-  25 
wrought  passage  where  the  horse  of  Achilles  answers 
his  master's  reproaches  for  having  left  Patroclus  on 
the  field  of  battle,  are  equally  un-Homeric  :  — 

"  For  not  through  sloth  or  tardiness  on  us 

Aught  chargeable,  have  Ilium's  sons  thine  arms  30 

Stript  from  Patroclus'  shoulders  ;  but  a  God 
Matchless  in  battle,  offspring  of  bright-haired 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER.  5 1 

Latona,  him  contending  in  the  van 
Slew,  for  the  glory  of  the  chief  of  Troy." 

Here  even  the  first  inversion,  "  have  Ilium's  sons 
thine  arms  Stript  from  Patroclus*  shoulders,"  gives 
5  the  reader  a  sense  of  a  movement  not  Homeric  ;  and 
the  second  inversion,  "a  God  him  contending  in  the 
van  Slew,"  gives  this  sense  ten  times  stronger.  In- 
stead of  moving  on  without  check,  as  in  reading  the 
original,  the  reader  twice  finds  himself,  in  reading  the 

io  translation,  brought  up  and  checked.  Homer  moves 
with  the  same  simplicity  and  rapidity  in  the  highly- 
wrought  as  in  the  simple  passage. 

It  is  in  vain  that  Cowper  insists  on  his  fidelity  : 
"  my  chief  boast  is  that  I  have  adhered  closely  to  my 

15  original": — "the  matter  found  in  me,  whether  the 
reader  like  it  or  not,  is  found  also  in  Homer  ;  and 
the  matter  not  found  in  me,  how  much  soever  the 
reader  may  admire  it,  is  found  only  in  Mr.  Pope." 
To  suppose  that  it  is  fidelity  to  an  original  to  give  its 

20  matter,  unless  you  at  the  same  time  give  its  manner  ; 
or,  rather,  to  suppose  that  you  can  really  give  its 
matter  at  all,  unless  you  can  give  its  manner,  is  just 
the  mistake  of  our  pre-Raphaelite  school' of  painters 
who  do  not  understand    that    the   peculiar  effect  of 

25  nature  resides  in  the  whole  and  not  in  the  parts.  So 
the  peculiar  effect  of  a  poet  resides  in  his  manner  and 
movement,  not  in  his  words  taken  separately.  It  is 
well  known  how  conscientiously  literal  is  Cowper  in 
his   translation   of   Homer.     It   is   well   known   how 

30  extravagantly  free  is  Pope. 

"So  let  it  be! 
Portents  and  prodigies  are  lost  on  me:" 


52  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

that  is  Pope's  rendering  of  the  words, 

A&vde,  tI  poi  Ba.va.rov  fxavreiieai ;   oidt  rl  ere  X9"h'  3 

"  Xanthus,  why  prophesiest  thou  my  death  to  me?  thou  needest 
not  at  all :  " — 

yet  on   the  whole,  Pope's  translation  of  the  Iliad  is  5 
more  Homeric  than  Cowper's,  for  it  is  more  rapid. 

Pope's  movement,  however,  though  rapid,  is  not 
of  the  same  kind  as  Homer's  ;  and  here  I  come  to  the 
real  objection  to  rhyme  in  a  translation  of  Homer. 
It  is  commonly  said  that  rhyme  is  to  be  abandoned  ia 
in  a  translation  of  Homer,  because  "  the  exigencies  of 
rhyme,"  to  quote  Mr.  Newman,  "positively  forbid 
faithfulness";  because  "a  just  translation  of  any 
ancient  poet  in  rhyme,"  to  quote  Cowper,  "  is  im- 
possible." This,  however,  is  merely  an  accidental  15 
objection  to  rhyme.  If  this  were  all,  it  might  be 
supposed,  that  if  rhymes  were  more  abundant,  Homer 
could  be  more  adequately  translated  in  rhyme.  But 
this  is  not  so  ;  there  is  a  deeper,  a  substantial  objec- 
tion to  rhyme  in  a  translation  of  Homer.  It  is,  that  20 
rhyme  inevitably  tends  to  pair  lines  which  in  the 
original  are  independent,  and  thus  the  movement  of 
the  poem  is  changed.  In  these  lines  of  Chapman,  for 
instance,  from  Sarpedon's  speech  to  Glaucus,  in  the 
twelfth  book  of  the  Iliad  : —  25 

"  O  friend,  if  keeping  back 
Would  keep  back  age  from  us,  and  death,  and  that  we  might  not 

wrack 
In  this  life's  human  sea  at  all,  but  that  deferring  now 
We  shurned  death  ever, — nor  would  I  half  this  vain  valor  show,    3c 

3  Iliad,  xix.  420. 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER.  53 

Nor  glorify  a  folly  so,  to  wish  thee  to  advance  ; 

But  since  we  must  go,  though  not  here,  and  that  besides  the  chanc* 

Proposed  now,  there  are  infinite  fates,"  etc. 

Here  the  necessity  of  making  the  line, 
5  "  Nor  glorify  a  folly  so,  to  wish  thee  to  advance," 

rhyme  with  the  line  which  follows  it,  entirely  changes 
and  spoils  the  movement  of  the  passage. 

oijre  Kev  avrbs  ivl  irpwroicri  fj.axolp.rii>, 
oijre  Ke  o~k  (TTiWoL/XL  p.dxv  &  Kvdi&veipav  4 

io  "  Neither  would  I  myself  go  forth  to  fight  with  the  foremost, 
•    Nor  would  I  urge  thee  on  to  enter  the  glorious  battle," 

says  Homer  ;  there  he  stops,  and  begins  an  opposed 
movement  : — 

vvv  5' — efjLTrrjs  yap  Kijpes  icpeffraaiv  davaroio — 
15  '■'  But — for  a  thousand  fates  of  death  stand  close  to  us  always" — 

This  line,  in  which  Homer  wishes  to  go  away  with 
the  most  marked  rapidity  from  the  line  before,  Chap- 
man is  forced,  by  the  necessity  of  rhyming,  intimately 
to  connect  with  the  line  before. 

20  "  But  since  we  must  go,  though  not  here,  and  that  besides  the 
chance  " — 

The  moment  the  word  chance  strikes  our  ear,  we  are 
irresistibly  carried  back  to  advance  and  to  the  whole 
previous  line,  which,  according  to  Homer's  own  feel- 
25  ing,  we  ought  to  have  left  behind  us  entirely,  and  to 
be  moving  farther  and  farther  away  from. 

Rhyme    certainly,    by    intensifying   antithesis,    can 
intensify  separation,  and  this  is  precisely  what  Pope 

4  Iliad,  xii.  324. 


54  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

does  ;  but  this  balanced  rhetorical  antithesis,  though 
very  effective,  is  entirely  un- Homeric.  And  this  is 
what  I  mean  by  saying  that  Pope  fails  to  render 
Homer,  because  he  does  not  render  his  plainness  and 
directness  of  style  and  diction.  Where  Homer  marks  5 
separation  by  moving  away,  Pope  marks  it  by  antithe- 
sis. No  passage  could  show  this  better  than  the 
passage  I  have  just  quoted,  on  which  I  will  pause  for 
a  moment. 

Robert  Wood,  whose  Essay  on  the  Genius  of  Hornet-  ia 
is  mentioned  by  Goethe  as  one  of  the  books  which 
fell  into  his  hands  when  his  powers  were  first  develop- 
ing themselves,  and  strongly  interested   him,  relates 
of   this  passage    a   striking   story.     He   says  that    in 
1762,  at   the   end   of   the    Seven    Years'  War,  being  15 
then  Under-Secretary  of   State,  he  was   directed   to 
wait  upon  the  President  of  the  Council,  Lord  Gran- 
ville, a  few  days  before  he  died,  with  the  preliminary 
articles  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris.     "I  found  him,"  he 
continues,   "  so  languid,  that  I  proposed  postponing  20 
my  business  for  another  time  ;  but  he  insisted  that 
I  should  stay,  saying,  it  could  not  prolong  his  life  to 
neglect  his  duty  ;  and  repeating  the  following  passage 
out  of  Sarpedon's  speech,  he  dwelled  with  particular 
emphasis  on  the  third  line,  which  recalled  to  his  mind  25 
the    distinguishing    part    he     had    taken    in    public 
affairs  : — 

<3  iriirov,  d  /xhv  yap  iroKep.ov  irepl  rdvde  <pvybvre, 

aitl  8tj  fj.tWoi/jiei'  dy^pu  r'  ddavdrw  re 

ea<read',  oijre  nev  avrbs  evl  ■wp&Toi.Gi.  /xaxolfnjv*  30 

6  These  are  the  words  on  which  Lord  Granville  "  dwelled  with 
particular  emphasis." 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  55 

otfre  Ke  <t£  (rrfWoifii  p-d-xW  &  KiiSidveipav 
vvv  5' — e/xirris  yap  Kijpes  icpearacnv  Bavdroto 
fivplai,  ds  oik  tern  ipvyetv  fipbrov,  odd'  u;ra\tf£ai— 
to/iev. 

5  His  Lordship  repeated  the  last  word  several  times 
with  a  calm  and  determinate  resignation  ;  and,  after  a 
serious  pause  of  some  minutes,  he  desired  to  hear  the 
Treaty  read,  to  which  he  listened  with  great  atten- 
tion,  and    recovered   spirits   enough   to   declare   the 

io  approbation  of  a  dying  statesman  (I  use  his  own 
words)  '  on  the  most  glorious  war,  and  most  honour- 
able peace,  this  nation  ever  saw.'  "  * 

I  quote  this  story,  first,  because  it  is  interesting  as 
exhibiting  the  English  aristocracy  at  its  very  height 

15  of  culture,  lofty  spirit,  and  greatness,  towards  the 
middle  of  the  last  century.  I  quote  it,  secondly, 
because  it  seems  to  me  to  illustrate  Goethe's  saying 
which  I  mentioned,  that  our  life,  in  Homer's  view  of 
it,  represents  a  conflict  and  a  hell  ;  and  it  brings  out 

2otoo,  what  there  is  tonic  and  fortifying  in  this  doctrine. 
I  quote  it,  lastly,  because  it  shows  that  the  passage 
is  just  one  of  those  in  translating  which  Pope  will  be 
at  his  best,  a  passage  of  strong  emotion  and  oratorical 
movement,  not  of  simple  narrative  or  description. 

25      Pope  translates  the  passage  thus  : — 

"  Could  all  our  care  elude  the  gloomy  grave 
Which  claims  no  less  the  fearful  than  the  brave, 
For  lust  of  fame  I  should  not  vainly  dare 
In  fighting  fields,  nor  urge  thy  soul  to  war : 

'  Robert  Wood,  Essay  on  the  Original  Genius  and  Writings 
of  Homer,  London,  1775,  p.  vii. 


5 6  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

But  since,  alas  !  ignoble  age  must  come, 
Disease,  and  death's  inexorable  doom  ; 
The  life  which  others  pay,  let  us  bestow, 
And  give  to  fame  what  we  to  nature  owe." 

Nothing  could  better  exhibit  Pope's  prodigious! 
talent,  and  nothing,  too,  could  be  better  in  its  own 
way.  But,  as  Bentley  said,  "  You  must  not  call  it 
Homer."  One  feels  that  Homer's  thought  has  passed 
through  a  literary  and  rhetorical  crucible,  and  come 
out  highly  intellectualised  ;  come  out  in  a  form  which  10 
strongly  impresses  us,  indeed,  but  which  no  longer 
impresses  us  in  the  same  way  as  when  it  was  uttered 
by  Homer.     The  antithesis  of  the  last  two  lines — 

"  The  life  which  others  pay,  let  us  bestow, 

And  give  to  fame  what  we  to  nature  owe  " —  15 

is  excellent,  and  is  just  suited  to  Pope's  heroic 
couplet ;  but  neither  the  antithesis  itself,  nor  the 
couplet  which  conveys  it  is  suited  to  the  feeling  or 
to  the  movement  of  the  Homeric  Zo/xev. 

A  literary  and  intellectualised  language  is,  however,  20 
in  its  own  way  well  suited  to  grand  matters  ;  and 
Pope,  with  a  language  of  this  kind  and  his  own  ad- 
mirable talent,  comes  off  well  enough  as  long  as  he 
has  passion,  or  oratory,  or  a  great  crisis  to  deal  with. 
Even  here,  as  I  have  been  pointing  out,  he  does  not  25 
render  Homer;  but  he  and  his  style  are  in  themselves 
strong.  It  is  when  he  comes  to  level  passages,  pas- 
sages of  narrative  or  description,  that  he  and  his  style 
are  sorely  tried,  and  prove  themselves  weak.  A  per- 
fectly plain  direct    style    can    of   course    convey  the  30 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  57 

simplest  matter  as  naturally  as  the  grandest  ;  indeed, 
it  must  be  harder  for  it,  one  would  say,  to  convey  a 
grand  matter  worthily  and  nobly,  than  to  convey  a 
common  matter,  as  alone  such  a  matter  should  be 
5  conveyed,  plainly  and  simply.  But  the  style  of 
Rasselas  is  incomparably  better  fitted  to  describe  a 
sage  philosophising  than  a  soldier  lighting  his  camp- 
fire.  The  style  of  Pope  is  not  the  style  of  Rasselas  ; 
but  it  is  equally  a  literary  style,  equally  unfitted  to 

10  describe  a  simple  matter  with  the  plain  naturalness  of 
Homer. 

Every  one  knows  the  passage  at  the  end  of  the 
eighth  book  of  the  Iliad,  where  the  fires  of  the  Trojan 
encampment  are  likened  to  the  stars.     It  is  very  far 

15  from  my  wish  to  hold  Pope  up  to  ridicule,  so  I  shall 
not  quote  the  commencement  of  the  passage,  which  in 
the  original  is  of  great  and  celebrated  beauty,  and 
in  translating  which  Pope  has  been  singularly  and 
notoriously  unfortunate.     But  the   latter   part  of  the 

20  passage,  where  Homer  leaves  the  stars,  and  comes  to 
the  Trojan  fires,  treats  of  the  plainest,  most  matter-of- 
fact  subject  possible,  and  deals  with  this,  as  Homer 
always  deals  with  every  subject,  in  the  plainest  and 
most  straightforward   style.     "  So  many   in   number, 

25  between  the  ships  and  the  streams  of  Xanthus,  shone 
forth  in  front  of  Troy  the  fires  kindled  by  the  Trojans. 
There  were  kindled  a  thousand  fires  on  the  plain  ;  and 
by  each  one  there  sat  fifty  men  in  the  light  of  the 
blazing  fire.     And  the  horses,  munching  white  barley 

so  and  rye,  and  standing  by  the  chariots,  waited  for  the 
bright-throned  Morning."7 

7  Iliad,  viii.  560. 


58  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

In  Pope's  translation,  this  plain  story  becomes  the 
following: — 

"  So  many  flames  before  proud  Ilion  blaze, 
And  brighten  glimmering  Xanthus  with  their  rays  ; 
The  long  reflections  of  the  distant  fires  5 

Gleam  on  the  walls  and  tremble  on  the  spires. 
A  thousand  piles  the  dusky  horrors  gild, 
And  shoot  a  shady  lustre  o'er  the  field. 
Full  fifty  guards  each  flaming  pile  attend, 
Whose  umbered  arms,  by  fits,  thick  flashes  send  ;  IO 

Loud  neigh  the  coursers  o'er  their  heaps  of  corn, 
And  ardent  warriors  wait  the  rising  morn." 


C5 


It  is  for  passages  of  this  sort,  which,  after  all,  form 
the  bulk  of  a  narrative  poem,  that  Pope's  style  is  so 
bad.     In  elevated  passages  he  is  powerful,  as  Homer  15 
is  powerful,  though  not  in  the  same  way  ;  but  in  plain 
narrative,  where  Homer  is  still  powerful  and  delightful, 
Pope,  by  the  inherent  fault  of  his  style,  is  ineffective 
and  out  of  taste.     Wordsworth  says  somewhere,  that 
wherever  Virgil  seems  to  have  composed  "  with  his  20 
eye   on    the   object,"    Dryden    fails    to    render   him. 
Homer   invariably  composes  "  with   his    eye   on  the 
object,"  whether  the  object  be  a  moral  or  a  material 
one  :  Pope  composes  with  his  eye  on  his   style,  into 
which  he  translates  his  object,  whatever  it  is.     That,  25 
therefore,  which  Homer  conveys  to  us  immediately, 
Pope  conveys  to  us  through  a  medium.     He  aims  at 
turning  Homer's    sentiments    pointedly  and  rhetori- 
cally ;  at   investing    Homer's  description   with   orna- 
ment and  dignity.     A  sentiment  maybe  changed  by  30 
being  put  into  a  pointed  and  oratorical  form,  yet  may 
still  be  very  effective  in  that  form  ;  but  a  description, 


ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER.  59 

the  moment  it  takes  its  eyes  off  that  which  it  is  to 
describe,  and  begins  to  think  of  ornamenting  itself,  is 
worthless. 

Therefore,  I  say,  the  translator  of  Homer  should 
5  penetrate  himself  with  a  sense  of  the  plainness  and 
directness  of  Homer's  style  ;  of  the  simplicity  with 
which  Homer's  thought  is  evolved  and  expressed. 
He  has  Pope's  fate  before  his  eyes,  to  show  him  what 
a  divorce  may  be   created  even   between   the   most 

io  gifted  translator  and  Homer  by  an  artificial  evolution 
of  thought  and  a  literary  cast  of  style. 

Chapman's  style  is  not  artificial  and  literary  like 
Pope's,  nor  his  movement  elaborate  and  self-retarding 
like  the  Miltonic  movement  of  Covvper.     He  is  plain- 

15  spoken,  fresh,  vigorous,  and,  to  a  certain  degree,  rapid; 
and  all  these  are  Homeric  qualities.  I  cannot  say 
that  I  think  the  movement  of  his  fourteen-syllable 
line,  which  has  been  so  much  commended,  Homeric  ; 
but  on  this  point  I  shall  have  more  to  say  by  and 

2oby,  when  I  come  to  speak  of  Mr.  Newman's  metrical 
exploits.  But  it  is  not  distinctly  anti-Homeric,  like 
the  movement  of  Milton's  blank  verse  ;  and  it  has  a 
rapidity  of  its  own.  Chapman's  diction,  too,  is  gener- 
ally good,  that  is,  appropriate  to  Homer  ;  above  all, 

25  the  syntactical  character  of  his  style  is  appropriate. 
With  these  merits,  what  prevents  his  translation  from 
being  a  satisfactory  version  of  Homer  ?  Is  it  merely 
the  want  of  literal  faithfulness  to  his  original,  imposed 
upon  him,  it  is  said,  by  the   exigencies  of  rhyme  ? 

30  Has  this  celebrated  version,  which  has  so  many  ad- 
vantages, no  other  and  deeper  defect  than  that  ?  Its 
author  is  a  poet,  and  a  poet,  too,  of  the  Elizabethan 


60  ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

age  ;  the  golden  age  of  English  literature  as  it  is 
called,  and  on  the  whole  truly  called  ;  for,  whatever 
be  the  defects  of  Elizabethan  literature  (and  they  are 
great),  we  have  no  development  of  our  literature  to 
compare  with  it  for  vigour  and  richness.  This  5 
age,  too,  showed  what  it  could  do  in  translating, 
by  producing  a  masterpiece,  its  version  of  the 
Bible. 

Chapman's  translation   has  often   been   praised   as 
eminently  Homeric.     Keats's  fine  sonnet  in  its  honour  10 
every  one    knows  ;    but    Keats   could    not    read    the 
original,  and   therefore    could    not    really   judge    the 
translation.     Coleridge,  in  praising  Chapman's  version, 
says  at  the  same  time,  "  It  will  give  you  small   idea 
of  Homer."     But  the  grave  authority  of  Mr.  Hallam  15 
pronounces  this  translation  to  be  "  often  exceedingly 
Homeric";  and  its  latest  editor  boldly  declares  that 
by  what,  with  a  deplorable  style,  he  calls  "his  own 
innative  Homeric  genius,"  Chapman  "  has  thoroughly 
identified  himself  with  Homer";  and  that  "  we  pardon  20 
him  even  for  his  digressions,  for  they  are  such  as  we 
feel  Homer  himself  would  have  written." 

I  confess  that   I  can  never  read   twenty  lines  of 
Chapman's  version  without  recurring  to  Bentley's  cry, 
"  This  is  not  Homer  !  "  and  that  from  a  deeper  cause  25 
than  any  unfaithfulness  occasioned  by  the  fetters  of 
rhyme. 

I  said  that  there  were  four  things  which  eminently 
distinguished    Homer,    and    with    a    sense    of   which 
Homer's  translator  should  penetrate  himself  as  fully  30 
as  possible.     One  of  these  four  things  was,  the  plain- 
ness and   directness  of  Homer's  ideas.     I  have  just 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER.  6 1 

been  speaking  of  the  plainness  and  directness  of  his 
style ;  but  the  plainness  and  directness  of  the  con- 
tents of  his  style,  of  his  ideas  themselves,  is  not  less 
remarkable.     But  as  eminently  as  Homer  is  plain,  so 

5  eminently  is  the  Elizabethan  literature  in  general, 
and  Chapman  in  particular,  fanciful.  Steeped  in 
humours  and  fantasticality  up  to  its  very  lips,  the 
Elizabethan  age,  newly  arrived  at  the  free  use  of  the 
human  faculties  after  their  long  term  of  bondage,  and 

10  delighting  to  exercise  them  freely,  suffers  from  its 
own  extravagance  in  this  first  exercise  of  them,  can 
hardly  bring  itself  to  see  an  object  quietly  or  to  de- 
scribe it  temperately.  Happily,  in  the  translation  of 
the  Bible,  the  sacred  character  of  their  original  in- 

15  spired  the  translators  with  such  respect  that  they  did 
not  dare  to  give  the  rein  to  their  own  fancies  in  dealing 
with  it.  But,  in  dealing  with  works  of  profane  litera- 
ture, in  dealing  with  poetical  works  above  all,  which 
highly  stimulated  them,  one  may  say  that  the  minds 

20 of  the  Elizabethan  translators  were  too  active;  that 
they  could  not  forbear  importing  so  much  of  their 
own,  and  this  of  a  most  peculiar  and  Elizabethan 
character,  into  their  original,  that  they  effaced  the 
character  of  the  original  itself. 

25  Take  merely  the  opening  pages  to  Chapman's  trans* 
lation,  the  introductory  verses,  and  the  dedications. 
You  will  find: — 


"  An  Anagram  of  the  name  of  our  Dread  Prince, 
My  most  gracious  and  sacred  Maecenas, 
30  Henry,  Prince  of  Wales, 

Our  Sunn,  Heyr,  Peace,  Life," — 


62  ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

Henry,  son  of  James  the  First,  to  whom  the  work  is 
dedicated.     Then  comes  an  address, 

"  To  the  sacred  Fountain  of  Princes, 

Sole  Empress  of  Beauty  and  Virtue,  Anne,  Queen 

Of  England,"  etc.  5 

All  the  Middle  Age,  with  its  grotesqueness,  its 
conceits,  its  irrationality,  is  still  in  these  opening 
pages  ;  they  by  themselves  are  sufficient  to  indicate 
to  us  what  a  gulf  divides  Chapman  from  the  "  clearest- 10 
souled  "  of  poets,  from  Homer  ;  almost  as  great  a  gulf 
as  that  which  divides  him  from  Voltaire.  Pope  has 
been  sneered  at  for  saying  that  Chapman  writes 
"somewhat  as  one  might  imagine  Homer  himself  to 
have  written  before  he  arrived  at  years  of  discretion,"  15 
But  the  remark  is  excellent :  Homer  expresses  him- 
self like  a  man  of  adult  reason,  Chapman  like  a  man 
whose  reason  has  not  yet  cleared  itself.  For  instance, 
if  Homer  had  had  to  say  of  a  poet,  that  he  hoped  his 
merit  was  now  about  to  be  fully  established  in  the  20 
opinion  of  good  judges,  he  was  as  incapable  of  saying 
this  as  Chapman  says  it, — "  Though  truth  in  her  very 
nakedness  sits  in  so  deep  a  pit,  that  from  Gades  to 
Aurora,  and  Ganges,  few  eyes  can  sound  her,  I  hope 
yet  those  few  here  will  so  discover  and  confirm  that  25 
the  date  being  out  of  her  darkness  in  this  morning  of 
our  poet,  he  shall  now  gird  his  temples  with  the  sun," 
— I  say,  Homer  was  as  incapable  of  saying  this  in  that 
manner,  as  Voltaire  himself  would  have  been.  Homer, 
indeed,  has  actually  an  affinity  with  Voltaire  in  the  30 
unrivalled  clearness  and  straightforwardness  of  his 
thinking  ;  in  the  way  in  which  he  keeps  to  one  thought 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER.  63 

at  a  time,  and  puts  that  thought  forth  in  its  complete 
natural  plainness,  instead  of  being  led  away  from  it 
by  some  fancy  striking  him  in  connection  with  it,  and 
being  beguiled  to  wander  off  with  this  fancy  till  his 
5  original  thought,  in  its  natural  reality,  knows  him  no 
more.  What  could  better  show  us  how  gifted  a  race 
was  this  Greek  race  ?  The  same  member  of  it  has  not 
only  the  power  of  profoundly  touching  that  natural 
heart  of  humanity  which   it   is   Voltaire's   weakness 

10  that  he  cannot  reach,  but  can  also  address  the  under- 
standing with  all  Voltaire's  admirable  simplicity  and 
rationality. 

My  limits  will  not  allow  me  to  do  more  than  shortly 
illustrate,  from  Chapman's  version  of  the  Iliad,  what 

15  I  mean  when  I  speak  of  this  vital  difference  between 
Homer  and  an  Elizabethan  poet  in  the  quality  of  their 
thought  ;  between  the  plain  simplicity  of  the  thought 
of  the  one,  and  the  curious  complexity  of  the  thought 
of  the  other.     As  in  Pope's  case,  I  carefully  abstain 

20  from  choosing  passages  for  the  express  purpose  of 
making  Chapman  appear  ridiculous  ;  Chapman,  like 
Pope,  merits  in  himself  all  respect,  though  he  too, 
like  Pope,  fails  to  render  Homer. 

In  that  tonic  speech  of  Sarpedon,  of  which  I  have 

25  said  so  much,  Homer,  you  may  remember,  has  : — 

el  /Mei>  yap,  irbXep-ov  irepl  rdvde  <j>vy6i>Te, 
alel  St]  fiiWoL/xev  ayr/po)  t'  adavaru  re 
%<j<re<rd', — 

"  if  indeed,  but  once  this  battle  avoided, 
30     We  were  for  ever  to  live  without  growing  old  and  immortal." 

Chapman  cannot  be  satisfied  with  this,  but  must  add  a 
fancy  to  it : — 


<H  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

"  if  keeping  back 
Would  keep  back  age  from  us,  and  death,  and  that  we  might 

not  wrack 
In  this  life's  human  sea  at  all ;  " 

and  so  on.     Again  ;  in  another  passage  which  I  have  5 
before   quoted,    where    Zeus   says   to    the    horses   of 
Peleus, 

tI  <r<pQi  dd/xev  Il^X^t'  olvclkti. 
6vqT$  ;   i/fids  5'  iarbv  ayrjpw  t'  d9a.va.Tu  re-  8 

"  Why  gave  we  you  to  royal  Peleus,  to  a  mortal  ?  but  ye  are  10 
without  old  age,  and  immortal." 

Chapman  sophisticates  this  into  : — 

"  Why  gave  we  you  t'  a  mortal  king,  when  immortality 
And  incapacity  of  age  so  dignifies  your  states  ?  " 

Again  ;  in  the  speech  of  Achilles  to  his  horses,  where  15 
Achilles,  according  to  Homer,  says  simply,  "Take 
heed  that  ye  bring  your  master  safe  back  to  the  host 
of  the  Danaans,  in  some  other  sort  than  the  last  time, 
when  the  battle  is  ended,"  Chapman  sophisticates  this 
into  : —  20 

"  When  with  blood,  for  this  day  s  fast  observed,  revenge  shall  yield 
Our  heart  satiety,  bring  us  off." 

In  Hector's  famous  speech,  again,  at  his  parting  from 
Andromache,  Homer  makes  him  say  :  "  Nor  does  my 
own  heart  so  bid  me  "  (to  keep  safe  behind  the  walls),  25 
"  since  I  have  learned  to  be  staunch  always,  and  to 
fight  among  the  foremost  of  the  Trojans,  busy  on 
behalf  of  my  father's  great  glory,  and  my  own."       In 

5  Iliad,  xvii.  443.  9  Iliad,  vi.  444. 


ON   TRANSLATING  HOMER.  65 

Chapman's  hands  this  becomes  : — 

"  The  spirit  I  first  did  breathe, 
Did  never  teach  me  that  ;  much  less,  since  the  contempt  of  death 
Was  settled  in  me,  and  my  mind  knew  what  a  worthy  ivas, 
5  Whose  office  is  to  lead  in  fight,  and  give  no  danger  pass 

Without  improvement.     In  this  fire  must  Hector's  trial  shine  : 
Here  must  his  country,  father,  friends,  be  in  him  made  divine." 

You  see  how  ingeniously  Homer's  plain  thought  is 
tormented,  as  the  French  would  say,  here.  Homer 
10  goes  on  :  "  For  well  I  know  this  in  my  mind  and  in 
my  heart,  the  day  will  be,  when  sacred  Troy  shall 
perish  ": — 

effcrerai  ij/xap,  6V  (Lv  ttot'  6\d)\y  * IXtos  lpi\. 

Chapman  makes  this  : 

15  "  And  such  a  stormy  day  shall  come,  in  mind  and  soul  I  know, 
When   sacred  Troy  shall  shed  her  towers,  for  tears  of  over- 
throw" 

I  might  go  on  for  ever,  but  I  could  not  give  you  a 
better  illustration  than  this  last,  of  what  I  mean  by 

20  saying  that  the  Elizabethan  poet  fails  to  render  Homer 
because  he  cannot  forbear  to  interpose  a  play  of 
thought  between  his  object  and  its  expression.  Chap- 
man translates  his  object  into  Elizabethan,  as  Pope 
translates  it  into  the  Augustan  of  Queen  Anne  ;  both 

25  convey  it  to  us  through  a  medium.  Homer,  on  the 
other  hand,  sees  his  object  and  conveys  it  to  us 
immediately. 

And    yet,   in    spite   of   this   perfect    plainness    and 
directness  of  Homer's  style,  in   spite  of  this  perfect 


66  ON    TRANSLATING  HOMER. 

plainness  and  directness  of  his  ideas,  he  is  eminently 
noble  ;  he  works  as  entirely  in  the  grand  style,  he  is 
as  grandiose,  as  Phidias,  or  Dante,  or  Michael 
Angelo.  This  is  what  makes  his  translators  despair. 
"  To  give  relief,"  says  Cowper,  "  to  prosaic  subjects  "  5 
(such  as  dressing,  eating,  drinking,  harnessing,  travel- 
ling, going  to  bed),  that  is  to  treat  such  subjects 
nobly,  in  the  grand  style,  "  without  seeming  unreason- 
ably tumid,  is  extremely  difficult."  It  is  difficult,  but 
Homer  has  done  it.  Homer  is  precisely  the  incom- 10 
parable  poet  he  is,  because  he  has  done  it.  His 
translator  must  not  be  tumid,  must  not  be  artifical, 
must  not  be  literary  ;  true  :  but  then  also  he  must  not 
be  commonplace,  must  not  be  ignoble.  I  have  shown 
you  how  translators  of  Homer  fail  by  wanting  rapidity,  15 
by  wanting  simplicity  of  style,  by  wanting  plainness  of 
thought  :  in  a  second  lecture  I  will  show  you  how  a 
translator  fails  by  wanting  nobility. — On  the  Study 
tf  Celtic  Literature  and  on  Translating  Homer,  ed. 
1895,  pp.  141-168. 


fl>btlologg  ano  Xiterature. 

But  Mr.  Newman  does  not  confine  himself  to  com- 
plaints on  his  own  behalf,  he  complains  on  Homer's 
behalf  too.  He  says  that  my  "  statements  about 
Greek  literature  are  against  the  most  notorious  and 
5  elementary  fact";  that  I  "do  a  public  wrong  to 
literature  by  publishing  them  ";  and  that  the  Pro- 
fessors to  whom  I  appealed  in  my  three  Lectures, 
"would  only  lose  credit  if  they  sanctioned  the  use 
I  make  of  their  names."     He  does  these  eminent  men 

iothe  kindness  of  adding,  however,  that,  "whether  they 
are  pleased  with  this  parading  of  their  names  in  behalf 
of  paradoxical  error,  he  may  well  doubt,"  and  that 
"  until  they  endorse  it  themselves,  he  shall  treat  my 
process  as  a  piece  of  forgery."     He  proceeds  to  discuss 

15  my  statements  at  great  length,  and  with  an  erudition 
and  ingenuity  which  nobody  can  admire  more  than  I 
do.  And  he  ends  by  saying  that  my  ignorance  is 
great. 

Alas  !    that  is  very  true.      Much  as  Mr.  Newman 

20  was  mistaken  when  he  talked  of  my  rancour,  he  is 
entirely  right  when  he  talks  of  my  ignorance.  And 
yet,  perverse  as  it  seems  to  say  so,  I  sometimes  find 
myself  wishing,  when  dealing  with  these  matters  of 
poetical  criticism,  that  my  ignorance  were  even  greater 

25  than  it  is.  To  handle  these  matters  properly  there  is 
needed  a  poise  so  perfect  that  the  least  overweight  in 

67 


68  PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE. 

any  direction  tends  to  destroy  the  balance.  Temper 
destroys  it,  a  crotchet  destroys  it,  even  erudition  may 
destroy  it.  To  press  to  the  sense  of  the  thing  itself 
with  which  one  is  dealing,  not  to  go  off  on  some  col- 
lateral issue  about  the  thing,  is  the  hardest  matter  in  5 
the  world.  The  "  thing  itself  "  with  which  one  is 
here  dealing, — the  critical  perception  of  poetic  truth, — 
is  of  all  things  the  most  volatile,  elusive,  and  evanes- 
cent ;  by  even  pressing  too  impetuously  after  it,  one 
runs  the  risk  of  losing  it.  The  critic  of  poetry  should  10 
have  the  finest  tact,  the  nicest  moderation,  the  most 
free,  flexible,  and  elastic  spirit  imaginable  ;  he  should 
be  indeed  the  "ondoyant  et  divers,"  the  undulating 
mid  diverse  being  of  Montaigne.  The  less  he  can 
deal  with  his  object  simply  and  freely,  the  more  things  15 
he  has  to  take  into  account  in  dealing  with  it, — the 
more,  in  short,  he  has  to  encumber  himself, — so  much 
the  greater  force  of  spirit  he  needs  to  retain  his 
elasticity.  But  one  cannot  exactly  have  this  greater 
force  by  wishing  for  it ;  so,  for  the  force  of  spirit  one  20 
has,  the  load  put  upon  it  is  often  heavier  than  it  will 
well  bear.  The  late  Duke  of  Wellington  said  of  a 
certain  peer  that  "it  was  a  great  pity  his  education 
had  been  so  far  too  much  for  his  abilities."  In  like 
manner,  one  often  sees  erudition  out  of  all  proportion  25 
to  its  owner's  critical  faculty.  Little  as  I  know,  there- 
fore, I  am  always  apprehensive,  in  dealing  with  poetry, 
lest  even  that  little  should  prove  "  too  much  for  my 
abilities." 

With  this  consciousness  of  my  own  lack  of  learning,  30 
— nay,  with  this  sort  of  acquiescence  in  it,  with  this 
belief  that   for  the  labourer  in   the  field  of  poetical 


PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE.  69 

criticism  learning  has  its  disadvantages, — I  am  not 
likely  to  dispute  with  Mr.  Newman  about  matters  of 
erudition.  All  that  he  says  on  these  matters  in  his 
Reply  I  read  with  great  interest  :  in  general  I  agree 
5  with  him  ;  but  only,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  up  to  a  certain 
point.  Like  all  learned  men,  accustomed  to  desire 
definite  rules,  he  draws  his  conclusions  too  absolutely  ; 
he  wants  to  include  too  much  under  his  rules;  he 
does  not  quite  perceive  that   in  poetical  criticism  the 

10  shade,  the  fine  distinction,  is  everything  ;  and  that  when 
he  has  once  missed  this,  in  all  he  says  he  is  in  truth 
but  beating  the  air.  For  instance  :  because  I  think 
Homer  noble,  he  imagines  I  must  think  him  elegant  ; 
and   in   fact   he   says  in  plain  words  that  I  do  think 

15  him  so, — that  to  me  Homer  seems  "  pervadingly 
elegant."  But  he  does  not.  Virgil  is  elegant, — 
"pervadingly  elegant," — even  in  passages  of  the 
highest   emotion  : 

"  O,  ubi  campi, 
20  Spercheosque,  et  virginibus  bacchata  Lacaenis 

Taygeta  ! "  ' 

Even  there  Virgil,  though  of  a  divine  elegance,  is  still 
elegant  :  but  Homer  is  not  elegant  ;  the  word  is  quite 
a  wrong  one  to  apply  to  him,  and  Mr.  Newman  is 
25  quite  right  in  blaming  any  one  he  finds  so  applying  it. 
Again  ;  arguing  against  my  assertion  that  Homer  is 
not  quaint,  he  says  :  "  It  is  quaint  to  call  waves  wet, 
milk  white,  blood  dusky,  horses  single-hoofed,  words 
winged,  Vulcan  Lobfoot  (KuAAo7roSiW),  a    spear   long- 

1,1  O  for  the  fields  of  Thessaly  and  the  streams  of  Spercheios  ! 
O  for  the  hills  alive  with  the  dances  of  the  Laconian  maidens, 
the  hills  of  Taygetus  ! " — Georgics,  ii.  486. 


7©  PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE. 

shadoivy,"  and  so  on.     I  find  I  know  not  how  many 
distinctions  to  draw  here.     I  do  not  think  it  quaint  to 
call  waves  wet,  or  milk  white,  or  words  winged ;  but  I 
do  think  it  quaint  to  call  horses  single-hoofed,  or  Vul- 
can Lobfoot,  or  a  spear  long shadowy.     As  to  calling  5 
blood  dusky,  I  do  not  feel  quite  sure  ;    I  will  tell  Mr. 
Newman  my  opinion  when  I  see  the  passage  in  which 
he  calls  it  so.     But  then,  again,  because  it  is  quaint 
to  call  Vulcan  Lobfoot,   I   cannot   admit  that  it  was 
quaint  to  call  him  KuAAo7roS<W ;  nor  that,  because  it  10 
is  quaint  to  call  a  spear  longshadowy,  it  was  quaint  to 
call   it   SoXlxoo-klov.      Here    Mr.   Newman's  erudition 
misleads  him  :  he  knows  the  literal  value  of  the  Greek 
so  well,  that  he  thinks  his  literal  rendering  identical 
with  the  Greek,  and  that  the  Greek  must  stand  or  fall  15 
along  with  his  rendering.     But  the  real  question  is, 
not  whether  he  has  given  us,  so  to  speak,  full  change 
for  the  Greek,  but  how  he  gives  us  our  change  :    we 
want  it  in  gold,  and  he  gives  it  us  in  copper.     Again  : 
"It   is  quaint,"    says    Mr.    Newman,    "to    address   a  20 
young  friend  as  '  O  Pippin  !  ' — it  is  quaint  to  com- 
pare Ajax   to   an   ass   whom    boys  are  belabouring." 
Here,  too,  Mr.  Newman  goes  much  too  fast,  and  his 
category  of   quaintness    is    too    comprehensive.      To 
address  a  young  friend  as  "  O  Pippin  !  "  is,  I  cordially  25 
agree  with  him,  very  quaint  ;  although  I  do  not  think 
it  was    quaint    in    Sarpedon    to    address    Glaucus  as 

0  Tciirov  :   but  in  comparing,  whether  in  Greek  or  in 
English,  Ajax  to  an  ass  whom  boys   are  belabouring, 

1  do  not  see  that  there  is  of  necessity  anything  quaint  3« 
at  all.     Again  ;    because  I  said  that  eld,  lief,  in  sooth, 
and  other  words,  are,  as  Mr.  Newman  uses  them  in 


PHILOLOGY  AND   LITERATURE.  7* 

certain  places,  bad  words,  he  imagines  that  I  must 
mean  to  stamp  these  words  with  an  absolute  reproba- 
tion ;  and  because  I  said  that  "  my  Bibliolatry  is  ex- 
cessive," he  imagines  that  I  brand  all  words  as  ignoble 
5  which  are  not  in  the  Bible.  Nothing  of  the  kind  : 
there  are  no  such  absolute  rules  to  be  laid  down  in 
these  matters.  The  Bible  vocabulary  is  to  be  used  as 
an  assistance,  not  as  an  authority.  Of  the  words 
which,  placed  where  Mr.  Newman  places  them,  I  have 
to  called  bad  words,  every  one  may  be  excellent  in  some 
other  place.  Take  eld,  for  instance  :  when  Shaks- 
peare,  reproaching  man  with  the  dependence  in  which 
his  youth  is  passed,  says  : 

"  all  thy  blessed  youth 
15  Becomes  as  aged,  and  doth  beg  the  alms 

Of  palsied  eld, "  .  .  . 

it  seems  to  me  that  eld  comes  in  excellently  there,  in 
a  passage  of  curious  meditation  ;  but  when  Mr.  New- 
man   renders    ayripus  r  aOavarw  re   by    "  from  Eld  and 

20  Death  exempted,"  it  seems  to  me  he  infuses  a  tinge  of 
quaintness  into  the  transparent  simplicity  of  Homer's 
expression,  and  so  I  call  eld  a  bad  word  in  that 
place. 

Once  more.     Mr.  Newman  lays  it  down  as  a  general 

25  rule  that  "  many  of  Homer's  energetic  descriptions 
are  expressed  in  coarse  physical  words."  He  goes 
on  :  "I  give  one  illustration, — Tpwes  irpovrvxpav  doAAe'e?. 
Cowper,  misled  by  the  ignis  fatuus  of  '  stateliness,' 
renders  it  absurdly : 

30  *  The  powers  of  Ilium  gave  the  first  assault 

Embattled  close  ; ' 


72  PHILOLOGY  AND   LITERATURE. 

but  it  is,  strictly,  '  The  Trojans  knocked  forward  (or, 
thumped,  butted  forward)  in  close  pack.1     The  verb  is 
too  coarse  for  later  polished  prose,  and  even  the  adjec- 
tive is  very  strong  {packed  together').     I  believe,  that 
'  forward  in  pack  the  Trojans  pitched,'  would  not  be  5 
really  unfaithful  to  the  Homeric  colour  ;  and  I  main- 
tain,  that    '  forward    in    mass    the    Trojans    pitched,' 
would   be  an   irreprovable  rendering."     He   actually 
gives  us  all  that  as  if  it  were  a  piece  of  scientific  de- 
duction ;  and  as  if,  at  the  end,  he  had  arrived  at  an  io 
incontrovertible  conclusion.     But,  in  truth,  one  can- 
not settle  these  matters  quite  in  this  way.     Mr.  New- 
man's general  rule  may  be  true  or  false  (I  dislike  to 
meddle  with  general  rules),  but   every  part  in  what 
follows  must  stand  or  fall  by  itself,  and  its  soundness  15 
or  unsoundness   has   nothing    at   all   to  do  with  the 
truth   or   falsehood    of  Mr.    Newman's    general    rule. 
He  first    gives,   as    a  strict  rendering  of  the  Greek, 
"  The  Trojans  knocked  forward  (or,  thumped,  butted 
forward),  in   close  pack."     I  need  not  say  that,  as  a  20 
"strict  rendering  of  the  Greek,"  this  is  good, — all  Mr. 
Newman's  "  strict  renderings  of  the  Greek  "  are  sure 
to  be,  as  such,  good;  but  "  in  close  pack,"  for  doAAe'es ; 
seems  to  me  to  be  what   Mr.   Newman's  renderings 
are  not  always, — an  excellent  poetical  rendering  of  the  25 
Greek  ;  a  thousand  times  better,  certainly,  than  Cow- 
per's    "  embattled    close."     Well,    but    Mr.    Newman 
goes  on  :  "I  believe  that,  '  forward  in  pack  the  Tro- 
jans pitched,'  would   not  be  really  unfaithful  to  the 
Homeric  colour."     Here,  I  say,  the  Homeric  colour  30 
is  half  washed  out  of  Mr.  Newman's  happy  rendering 
of   aoAAe'es ;     while  in  "pitched"  for    irpovTv\jjav}  the 


PHILOLOGY  AND   LITERATURE.  73 

literal  fidelity  of  the  first  rendering  is  gone,  while 
certainly  no  Homeric  colour  has  come  in  its  place. 
Finally,  Mr.  Newman  concludes  :  "  I  maintain  that 
'  forward  in  mass  the  Trojans  pitched,'  would  be  an 

5  irreprovable  rendering."  Here,  in  what  Mr.  Newman 
fancies  his  final  moment  of  triumph,  Homeric  colour 
and  literal  fidelity  have  alike  abandoned  him  alto- 
gether ;  the  last  stage  of  his  translation  is  much  worse 
than  the  second,  and  immeasurably  worse  than  the 

to  first. 

All  this  to  show  that  a  looser,  easier  method  than 
Mr.  Newman's  must  be  taken,  if  we  are  to  arrive  at 
any  good  result  in  these  questions.  I  now  go  on  to 
follow  Mr.  Newman  a  little  further,  not  at  all  as  wish- 

t5  ing  to  dispute  with  him,  but  as  seeking  (and  this  is 
the  true  fruit  we  may  gather  from  criticisms  upon  us) 
to  gain  hints  from  him  for  the  establishment  of  some 
useful  truth  about  our  subject,  even  when  I  think 
him  wrong.     I  still  retain,   I  confess,   my  conviction 

20  that  Homer's  characteristic  qualities  are  rapidity  of 
movement,  plainness  of  words  and  style,  simplicity 
and  directness  of  ideas,  and,  above  all,  nobleness, 
the  grand  manner.  Whenever  Mr.  Newman  drops  a 
word,  awakens  a  train  of  thought,  which  leads  me  to 

*5  see  any  of  these  characteristics  more  clearly,  I  am 
grateful  to  him  ;  and  one  or  two  suggestions  of  this 
kind  which  he  affords,  are  all  that  now, — having  ex- 
pressed my  sorrow  that  he  should  have  misconceived 
my  feelings  towards  him,  and  pointed  out  what  I  think 

30  the  vice  of  this  method  of  criticism, — I  have  to  notice 
in  his  Reply. 

Such  a  suggestion  I  find  in  Mr.  Newman's  remarks 


74  PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE. 

on  my  assertion  that  the  translator  of  Homer  must 
not  adopt  a  quaint  and  antiquated  style  in  rendering 
him,  because  the  impression  which  Homer  makes  upon 
the  living  scholar  is  not  that  of  a  poet  quaint  and 
antiquated,  but  that  of  a  poet  perfectly  simple,  per-  5 
fectly  intelligible.  I  added  that  we  cannot,  I  confess, 
really  know  how  Homer  seemed  to  Sophocles,  but 
that  it  is  impossible  to  me  to  believe  that  he  seemed 
to  him  quaint  and  antiquated.  Mr.  Newman  asserts, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  I  am  absurdly  wrong  here  ;  ia 
that  Homer  seemed  "  out  and  out  "  quaint  and  anti- 
quated to  the  Athenians  ;  that  "  every  sentence  of 
him  was  more  or  less  antiquated  to  Sophocles,  who 
could  no  more  help  feeling  at  every  instant  the  foreign 
and  antiquated  character  of  the  poetry  than  an  Eng-  15 
lishman  can  help  feeling  the  same  in  reading  Burns's 
poems."  And  not  only  does  Mr.  Newman  say  this, 
but  he  has  managed  thoroughly  to  convince  some  of 
his  readers  of  it.  "Homer's  Greek,"  says  one  of 
them,  "  certainly  seemed  antiquated  to  the  historical  20 
times  of  Greece.  Mr.  Newman,  taking  a  far  broader 
historical  and  philological  view  than  Mr.  Arnold, 
stoutly  maintains  that  it  did  seem  so."  And  another 
says  :  "  Doubtless  Homer's  dialect  and  diction  were 
as  hard  and  obscure  to  a  later  Attic  Greek  as  Chaucer  25 
to  an  Englishman  of  our  day." 

Mr.  Newman  goes  on  to  say,  that  not  only  was 
Homer  antiquated  relatively  to  Pericles,  but  he  is 
antiquated  to  the  living  scholar  ;  and,  indeed,  is  in 
himself,  "  absolutely  antique,  being  the  poet  of  a  bar-  30 
barian  age."  He  tells  us  of  his  "  inexhaustible  quaint- 
nesses,"  of   his   "  very   eccentric   diction ";    and    he 


PHILOLOGY  AND  LLTERATURE.  75 

infers,  of  course,  that  he  is  perfectly  right  in  rendering 
him  in  a  quaint  and  antiquated  style. 

Now  this  question, — whether  or  no  Homer  seemed 
quaint  and  antiquated  to  Sophocles, — I  call  a  delight- 
5  ful  question  to  raise.  It  is  not  a  barren  verbal  dis- 
pute ;  it  is  a  question  "  drenched  in  matter,"  to  use  an 
expression  of  Bacon  ;  a  question  full  of  flesh  and 
blood,  and  of  which  the  scrutiny,  though  I  still  think 
we    cannot    settle    it    absolutely,  may   yet   give    us  a 

10  directly  useful  result.  To  scrutinise  it  may  lead  us 
to  see  more  clearly  what  sort  of  a  style  a  modern 
translator  of  Homer  ought  to  adopt. 

Homer's  verses  were  some  of  the  first  words  which 
a  young  Athenian  heard.     He  heard  them  from  his 

15  mother  or  his  nurse  before  he  went  to  school  ;  and  at 
school,  when  he  went  there,  he  was  constantly  occu- 
pied with  them.  So  much  did  he  hear  of  them  that 
Socrates  proposes,  in  the  interests  of  morality,  to 
have  selections  from  Homer  made,  and  placed   in  the 

20  hands  of  mothers  and  nurses,  in  his  model  republic  ; 
in  order  that,  of  an  author  with  whom  they  were  sure 
to  be  so  perpetually  conversant,  the  young  might  learn 
only  those  parts  which  might  do  them  good.  His 
language  was  as   familiar  to   Sophocles,   we   may  be 

25  quite  sure,  as  the  language  of  the  Bible  is  to  us. 

Nay,  more.  Homer's  language  was  not,  of  course, 
in  the  time  of  Sophocles,  the  spoken  or  written  lan- 
guage of  ordinary  life,  any  more  than  the  language  of 
the  Bible,  any  more  than  the  language  of  poetry,  is 

30  with  us  ;  but  for  one  great  species  of  composition — 
epic  poetry — it  was  still  the  current  language  ;  it  was 
the  language  in  which  every  one  who  made  that  sort 


76  PHILOLOGY  AND   LITERATURE. 

of  poetry  composed.  Every  one  at  Athens  who 
dabbled  in  epic  poetry,  not  only  understood  Homer's 
language, — he  possessed  it.  He  possessed  it  as  every 
one  who  dabbles  in  poetry  with  us,  possesses  what 
may  be  called  the  poetical  vocabulary,  as  distinguished  5 
from  the  vocabulary  of  common  speech  and  of 
modern  prose  :  I  mean,  such  expressions  as  perchance 
for  perhaps,  spake  for  spoke,  aye  for  ever,  don  for  put  on, 
charmed  for  charm 'd,  and  thousands  of  others. 

I  might  go  to  Burns  and  Chaucer,  and,  taking  10 
words  and  passages  from  them,  ask  if  they  afforded 
any  parallel  to  a  language  so  familiar  and  so  possessed. 
But  this  I  will  not  do,  for  Mr.  Newman  himself  sup- 
plies me  with  what  he  thinks  a  fair  parallel,  in  its 
effect  upon  us,  to  the  language  of  Homer  in  its  effect  15 
upon  Sophocles.  He  says  that  such  words  as  mon, 
londis,  libbard,  withouten,  muchel,  give  us  a  tolerable  but 
incomplete  notion  of  this  parallel ;  and  he  finally 
exhibits  the  parallel  in  all  its  clearness,  by  this  poeti- 
cal specimen  : —  20 

"  Dat  mon,  quhich  hauldeth  Kyngis  af 
Londis  yn  feo,  niver 
(I  tell  'e)  feereth  aught  ;  sith  hee 
Doth  hauld  hys  londis  yver." 

Now,  does  Mr.  Newman  really  think  that  Sophocles  25 
could,  as  he  says,  "  no  more  help  feeling  at  every 
instant  the  foreign  and  antiquated  character  of 
Homer,  than  an  Englishman  can  help  feeling  the 
same  in  hearing  "  these  lines  ?  Is  he  quite  sure  of  it  ? 
He  says  he  is  ;  he  will  not  allow  of  any  doubt  or  hesi-  30 
tation  in  the  matter.     I  had  confessed  we  could  not 


PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE.  77 

really  know  how  Homer  seemed  to  Sophocles  ; — "  Let 
Mr.  Arnold  confess  for  himself,"  cries  Mr.  Newman, 
"  and  not  for  me,  who  know  perfectly  well."  And 
this  is  what  he  knows  ! 
5  Mr.  Newman  says,  however,  that  I  "play  falla- 
ciously on  the  words  familiar  and  unfamiliar  ";  that 
"  Homer's  words  may  have  been  familiar  to  the 
Athenians  (/.  e.  often  heard)  even  when  they  were 
either  not  understood  by  them  or  else,  being  under- 

10  stood,  were  yet  felt  and  known  to  be  utterly  foreign. 
Let  my  renderings,"  he  continues,  "  be  heard,  as  Pope 
or  even  Cowper  has  been  heard,  and  no  one  will  be 
'surprised.'  " 

But    the  whole   question   is    here.     The   translator 

15  must  not  assume  that  to  have  taken  place  which  has 
not  taken  place,  although,  perhaps,  he  may  wish  it 
to  have  taken  place, — namely,  that  his  diction  is 
become  an  established  possession  of  the  minds  of 
men,  and   therefore   is,  in   its  proper  place,  familiar 

20  to  them,  will  not  "surprise"  them.  If  Homer's 
language  was  familiar, — that  is,  often  heard, — then 
to  this  language  words  like  londis  and  libbard,  which 
are  not  familiar,  offer,  for  the  translator's  purpose, 
no  parallel.     For  some  purpose  of  the  philologer  they 

25  may  offer  a  parallel  to  it ;  for  the  translator's  purpose 
they  offer  none.  The  question  is  not,  whether  a 
diction  is  antiquated  for  current  speech,  but  whether 
it  is  antiquated  for  that  particular  purpose  for  which 
it  is  employed.     A  diction  that  is  antiquated  for  com- 

30  mon  speech  and  common  prose,  may  very  well  not  be 
antiquated  for  poetry  or  certain  special  kinds  of  prose. 
"  Peradventure  there    shall  be   ten   found    there,"   is 


78  PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE. 

not  antiquated  for  Biblical  prose,  though  for  conversa- 
tion or  for  a  newspaper  it  is  antiquated.  "  The 
trumpet  spake  not  to  the  armed  throng,"  is  not  anti- 
quated for  poetry,  although  we  should  not  write  in  a 
letter,  "he  spake  to  me,"  or  say,  "the  British  soldier  is  5 
armid  with  the  Enfield  rifle."  But  when  language 
is  antiquated  for  that  particular  purpose  for  which 
it  is  employed, — as  numbers  of  Chaucer's  words,  for 
instance,  are  antiquated  for  poetry, — such  language  is 
a  bad  representative  of  language  which,  like  Homer's,  10 
was  never  antiquated  for  that  particular  purpose  for 
which  it  was  employed.  I  imagine  that  Hr)\r)'id&eo> 
for  Ur)\ei8ov,  in  Homer,  no  more  sounded  antiquated 
to  Sophocles  than  artne'd  for  arm'd,  in  Milton,  sounds 
antiquated  to  us  ;  but  Mr.  Newman's  withouten  and  15 
muchel  do  sound  to  us  antiquated,  even  for  poetry,  and 
therefore  they  do  not  correspond  in  their  effect  upon 
us  with  Homer's  words  in  their  effect  upon  Sophocles. 
When  Chaucer,  who  uses  such  words,  is  to  pass  cur- 
rent amongst  us,  to  be  familiar  to  us,  as  Homer  was  20 
familiar  to  the  Athenians,  he  has  to  be  modernised,  as 
Wordsworth  and  others  set  to  work  to  modernise  him  ; 
but  an  Athenian  no  more  needed  to  have  Homer 
modernised,  than  we  need  to  have  the  Bible  modern- 
ised, or  Wordsworth  himself.  25 

Therefore,  when  Mr.  Newman's  words  bragly, 
bulkin,  and  the  rest,  are  an  established  possession 
of  our  minds,  as  Homer's  words  were  an  established 
possession  of  an  Athenian  mind,  he  may  use  them  ; 
but  not  till  then.  Chaucer's  words,  the  words  of  3a 
Burns,  great  poets  as  these  were,  are  yet  not  thus  an 
established  possession  of  an  Englishman's  mind,  and 


PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE.  79 

therefore  they  must  not  be  used  in  rendering  Homei 
into  English. 

Mr.  Newman  has  been  misled  just  by  doing  that 
which  his  admirer  praises  him  for  doing,  by  taking  a 
5  "  far  broader  historical  and  philological  view  than  " 
mine.  Precisely  because  he  has  done  this,  and  has 
applied  the  "  philological  view "  where  it  was  not 
applicable,  but  where  the  ''  poetical  view  "  alone  was 
rightly  applicable,  he  has  fallen  into  error. 

10  It  is  the  same  with  him  in  his  remarks  on  the  diffi- 
culty and  obscurity  of  Homer.  Homer,  I  say,  is  per- 
fectly plain  in  speech,  simple,  and  intelligible.  And  I 
infer  from  this  that  his  translator,  too,  ought  to  be 
perfectly  plain  in   speech,  simple,    and    intelligible  ; 

15  ought  not  to  say,  for  instance,  in  rendering 

Oijre  Ke  <t£  otAXoi/u  paxy  es  nvSidveipav  .   .   . 

"  Nor  liefly  thee  would  I  advance  to  man-ennobling 
battle," — and  things  of  that  kind.  Mr.  Newman 
hands  me  a  list  of  some  twenty  hard  words,  invokes 

20  Buttman,  Mr.  Maiden,  and  M.  Benfey,  and  asks  me 
if  I  think  myself  wiser  than  all  the  world  of  Greek 
scholars,  and  if  I  am  ready  to  supply  the  deficiencies 
of  Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon !  But  here,  again, 
Mr.  Newman  errs  by  not  perceiving  that  the  question 

25  is  one  not  of  scholarship,  but  of  a  poetical  translation 
of  Homer.  This,  I  say,  should  be  perfectly  simple 
and  intelligible.  He  replies  by  telling  me  that  dSivos, 
etAiVoSes,  and  criyaAoets  are  hard  words.  Well,  but 
what   does    he    infer  from   that  ?     That   the  poetical 

30  translator,  in  his  rendering  of  them,  is  to  give  us 
a  sense  of  the  difficulties  of  the  scholar,  and  so  is  to 


80  PHILOLOGY  AND   LITERATURE. 

make  his  translation  obscure  ?     If  he  does  not  mean 
that,  how,  by  bringing  forward  these  hard  words,  does 
he  touch  the  question  whether  an  English  version  of 
Homer  should  be  plain   or  not  plain?     If  Homer's 
poetry,  as  poetry,  is  in  its  general  effect  on  the  poetical  5 
reader  perfectly  simple  and  intelligible,  the  uncertainty 
of  the  scholar  about  the  true  meaning  of  certain  words 
can  never  change  this  general  effect.     Rather  will  the 
poetry  of  Homer  make  us  forget  his  philology,  than 
his  philology  make  us  forget  his  poetry.     It  may  even  ia 
be  affirmed  that  every  one  who  reads  Homer  perpetu- 
ally for  the  sake  of  enjoying  his  poetry  (and  no  one 
who  does  not  so   read    him   will  ever  translate  him 
well),  comes  at  last  to  form  a  perfectly  clear  sense  in 
his  own  mind  for  every  important  word  in  Homer,  15 
such    as   dStvo?,  or   rjXifiaros,    whatever    the   scholar's 
doubts  about   the   word  may  be.     And  this  sense  is 
present  to  his  mind  with  perfect  clearness  and  fulness, 
whenever  the  word  recurs,  although  as  a  scholar  he 
may  know  that  he  cannot  be  sure  whether  this  sense  20 
is  the  right  one  or  not.    But  poetically  he  feels  clearly 
about  the  word,  although  philologically  he  may  not. 
The  scholar  in  him  may  hesitate,  like  the  father  in 
Sheridan's  play  ;  but  the   reader   of   poetry   in    him 
is,  like  the  governor,  fixed.     The  same  thing  happens  25 
to  us  with  our  own  language.     How  many  words  occur 
in    the    Bible,    for   instance,    to    which   thousands  of 
hearers  do  not  feel  sure  they  attach  the  precise  real 
meaning  ;  but  they  make  out  a  meaning  for  them  out 
of  what  materials  they  have  at  hand  ;  and  the  words,  3° 
heard  over  and  over  again,  come  to  convey  this  mean- 
ing  with   a   certainty    which  poetically   is  adequate, 


PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE.  81 

though  not  philologically.  How  many  have  attached 
a  clear  and  poetically  adequate  sense  to  "  the  beam  " 
and  "  the  mote,"  though  not  precisely  the  right  one  ! 
How  clearly,  again,  have  readers  got  a  sense  from 
5  Milton's  words,  "  grate  on  their  scrannel  pipes,"  who 
yet  might  have  been  puzzled  to  write  a  commentary 
on  the  word  scrannel  for  the  dictionary  !  So  we  get  a 
clear  sense  from  dSivos  as  an  epithet  for  grief,  after 
often  meeting  with  it  and  finding  out  all  we  can  about 

ioit,  even  though  that  all  be  philologically  insufficient  ; 
so  we  get  a  clear  sense  from  ti'AiVoSes  as  an  epithet 
for  cows.  And  this  his  clear  poetical  sense  about  the 
words,  not  his  philological  uncertainties  about  them, 
is  what  the   translator  has    to    convey.     Words  like 

15  bragly  and  bulkui  offer  no  parallel  to  these  words; 
because  the  reader,  from  his  entire  want  of  familiarity 
with  the  words  bragly  and  bulh'n,  has  no  clear  sense 
of  them  poetically. 

Perplexed   by   his    knowledge   of  the    philological 

20  aspect  of  Homer's  language,  encumbered  by  his  own 
learning,  Mr.  Newman,  I  say,  misses  the  poetical 
aspect,  misses  that  with  which  alone  we  are  here  con- 
cerned. "  Homer  is  odd,"  he  persists,  fixing  his  eyes 
on  his  own    philological  analysis  of  fxo)vv$,  and  fiepoips, 

25  and  Kv\\otto8lwv,  and  not  on  these  words  in  their 
synthetic  character  ; — just  as  Professor  Max  Midler, 
going  a  little  farther  back,  and  fixing  his  attention  on 
the  elementary  value  of  the  word  dvyaT-qp,  might  say 
Homer  was   "  odd  "   for  using   that   word  ; — "  if  the 

30  whole  Greek  nation,  by  long  familiarity,  had  become 
inobservant  of  Homer's  oddities," — of  the  oddities  of 
this  "  noble  barbarian,"  as    Mr.    Newman   elsewhere 


82  PHILOLOGY  AND  LITERATURE. 

calls  him,  this  "noble  barbarian"  with  the  "lively 
eye  of  the  savage," — "  that  would  be  no  fault  of  mine. 
That  would  not  justify  Mr.  Arnold's  blame  of  me  for 
rendering  the  words  correctly."  Correctly, — ah,  but 
what  is  correctness  in  this  case  ?  This  correctness  of  5 
his  is  the  very  rock  on  which  Mr.  Newman  has  split. 
He  is  so  correct  that  at  last  he  finds  peculiarity  every- 
where. The  true  knowledge  of  Homer  becomes  at 
last,  in  his  eyes,  a  knowledge  of  Homer's  "  peculiari- 
ties, pleasant  and  unpleasant."  Learned  men  know  10 
these  "  peculiarities,"  and  Homer  is  to  be  translated 
because  the  unlearned  are  impatient  to  know  them 
too.  "  That,"  he  exclaims,  "  is  just  why  people  want 
to  read  an  English  Homer, — to  know  all  his  oddities, 
just  as  learned  men  do."  Here  I  am  obliged  to  shake  15 
my  head,  and  to  declare  that,  in  spite  of  all  my 
respect  for  Mr.  Newman,  I  cannot  go  these  lengths 
with  him.  He  talks  of  my  "monomaniac  fancy  that 
there  is  nothing  quaint  or  antique  in  Homer."  Terrible 
learning, — I  cannot  help  in  my  turn  exclaiming, —  20 
terrible  learning,  which  discovers  so  much  ! — On  the 
Study  of  Celtic  Literature  and  on  Translating  Homer, 
ed.  1895,  pp.  244-260. 


Zhe  Gkano  Stgle. 

Nothing  has  raised  more  questioning  among  my 
critics  than  these  words, — ?wble,  the  grand  style.  Peo- 
ple complain  that  I  do  not  define  these  words  suffi- 
ciently, that  I  do  not  tell  them  enough  about  them. 
5  "  The  grand  style, — but  what  is  the  grand  style  ?  " — 
they  cry  ;  some  with  an  inclination  to  believe  in  it, 
but  puzzled  ;  others  mockingly  and  with  incredulity. 
Alas  !  the  grand  style  is  the  last  matter  in  the  world 
for  verbal  definition  to  deal  with    adequately.     One 

10  may  say  of  it  as  is  said  of  faith:  "  One  must  feel  it  in 
order  to  know  what  it  is."  But,  as  of  faith,  so  too  one 
may  say  of  nobleness,  of  the  grand  style:  "Woe  to 
those  who  know  it  not  !  "  Yet  this  expression,  though 
indefinable,  has  a  charm  ;  one  is  the  better  for  consid- 

15  ering  it ;  bonam  est,  nos  hie  esse;  nay,  one  loves  to  try 
to  explain  it,  though  one  knows  that  one  must  speak 
imperfectly.  For  those,  then,  who  ask  the  question, — 
What  is  the  grand  style  ? — with  sincerity,  I  will  try  to 
make  some  answer,  inadequate  as  it  must  be.    For  those 

20  who  ask  it  mockingly  I  have  no  answer,  except  to  repeat 

to  them,  with  compassionate  sorrow,  the  Gospel  words: 

Moriemini  in  peccatisvestris, — Ye  shall  die  in  your  sins. 

But  let  me,  at  any  rate,  have  the  pleasure  of  again 

giving,  before  I  begin   to  try  and  define  the   grand 

25  style,  a  specimen  of  what  it  is. 

83 


84  THE    GRAND   STYLE. 

"  Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  pole, 
More  safe  I  sing  with  mortal  voice,  unchanged 
To  hoarse  or  mute,  though  fall'n  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fall'n,  and  evil  tongues,"  .   .  . 

There  is  the  grand  style  in  perfection  ;  and  any  one  5 
who  has  a  sense  for  it,  will  feel  it  a  thousand  times 
better  from  repeating  those  lines  than  from   hearing 
anything  I  can  say  about  it. 

Let   us  try,  however,  what  can  be  said,  controlling 
what  we  say  by  examples.     I   think  it  will  be  found  10 
that  the  grand  style  arises    in    poetry^ when   a    noble 
nature,  poetically  gifted,  treats  with  sinvftTicity  or  with 
f[  severity  a  (Serious  subject^  I  think  this  definition   will 

^•^^.^e^iounfluT  cover  all  instances  of  the  grand  style  in 
$$(#+*  ^ptfreirywrrnch  present  themselves.     I  think  it  will  be  15 
found  to  exclude  all  poetry  which  is  not  in  the  grand 
style.     And  I  think  it  contains  no  terms  which  are 
obscure,  which  themselves  need  defining.     Even  those 
who  do    not    understand    what    is   meant   by    calling 
poetry   noble,    will    understand,    I    imagine,    what    is  20 
meant  by  speaking  of  a  noble  nature  in  a  man.     But 
the  noble   or  powerful   nature — the  bedeutendes  indi- 
viduum  of  Goethe — is  not  enough.     For  instance,  Mr. 
Newman  has  zeal  for  learning,  zeal  for  thinking,  zeal 
for  liberty,  and  all  these  things  are  noble,  they  enno-  25 
ble  a  man  ;  but  he  has  not  the  poetical   gift  ;  there 
must  be  the  poetical  gift,  the  "  divine  faculty,"  also. 
And,  besides  all  this,  the  subject  must  be  a  serious 
one  (for  it  is  only  by  a  kind  of  license  that  we  can 
speak  of  the  grand  style  in  comedy)  ;  and  it  must  be  30 
treated  with  simplicity  or  severity.     Here  is  the  great 
difficulty  ;   the  poets  of  the  world  have  been   many  ; 
there  has  been  wanting  neither  abundance  of  poetical 


THE   GRAND   STYLE.  85 

gift  nor  abundance  of  noble  natures  ;  but  a  poetical 
gift  so  happy,  in  a  noble  nature  so  circumstanced  and 
trained,  that  the  result  is  a  continuous  style,  perfect  in 
simplicity  or  perfect  in  severity,  has  been  extremely 
5  rare.  One  poet  has  had  the  gifts  of  nature  and  faculty 
in  unequalled  fulness,  without  the  circumstances  and 
training  which  make  this  sustained  perfection  of  style 
possible.  Of  other  poets,  some  have  caught  this  per- 
fect strain  now  and  then,  in  short  pieces  or  single 

10  lines,  but  have  not  been  able  to  maintain  it  through 
considerable  works  ;  others  have  composed  all  their 
productions  in  a  style  which,  by  comparison  with  the 
best,  one  must  call  secondary. 

The  best  model  of  the  grand  style  simple  is  Homer  ; 

15  perhaps  the  best  model  of  the  grand  style  severe  is 
Milton.  But  Dante  is  remarkable  for  affording 
admirable  examples  of  both  styles  ;  he  has  the  grand 
style  which  arises  from  simplicity,  and  he  has  the 
grand  style  which  arises  from  severity  ;  and  from  him 

20 1  will  illustrate  them  both.  In  a  former  lecture  I 
pointed  out  what  that  severity  6f  poetical  style  is, 
which  comes  from  saying  a  thing  with  a  kind  of  intense 
compression,  or  in  an  allusive,  brief,  almost  haughty 
way,  as  if  the  poet's  mind  were  charged  with  so  many 

25  and  such  grave  matters,  that  he  would  not  deign  to 

treat  any  one  of  them  explicitly.     Of  this  severity  the 

last  line  of  the  following  stanza  of  the  Purgatory  is  a 

good  example.    Dante  has  been  telling  Forese  that  Vir* 

gil  had  guided  him  through  Hell,  and  he  goes  on  : — ■ 

30  "  Indi  m'  han  tratto  su  gli  suoi  conforti, 

Salendo  e  rigirando  la  Montagna 
Che  drizza  voi  che  il  mondo  fece  lorti,"  ' 

1  Purgatory ;  xxiii.  124. 


86  THE   GRAND   STYLE. 

"  Thence  hath  his  comforting  aid  led  me  up,  climb- 
ing and  circling  the  Mountain,  which  straightens  you 
whom  the  world  made  crooked."  These  last  words,  "  la 
Montagna  che  drizza  voi  die  il  mondo  fece  torti." — "  the 
Mountain  which  straightens  you  whom  the  world  made  $ 
crooked," — for  the  Mountain  of  Purgatory,  I  call  an 
excellent  specimen  of  the  grand  style  in  severity, 
where  the  poet's  mind  is  too  full  charged  to  suffer  him 
to  speak  more  explicitly.  But  the  very  next  stanza  is 
a  beautiful  specimen  of  the  grand  style  in  simplicity,  10 
where  a  noble  nature  and  a  poetical  gift  unite  to  utter 
a  thing  with  the  most  limpid  plainness  and  clear- 
ness : — 

"  Tanto  dice  di  farmi  sua  compagna 

Ch'  io  saro  la  dove  fia  Beatrice  ;  15 

Quivi  convien  che  senza  lui  rimagna."* 

"  So  long,"   Dante  continues,   "  so  long  he  (Virgil) 
saith  he  will  bear  me  company,  until  I  shall  be  there 
where  Beatrice  is  ;   there  it  behoves  that  without  him 
I  remain."     But  the  noble  simplicity  of  that  in  the  20 
Italian  no  words  of  mine  can  render. 

Both  these  styles,  the  simple  and  the  severe,  are 
truly  grand  ;  the  severe  seems,  perhaps,  the  grandest, 
so  long  as  we  attend  most  to  the  great  personality,  to 
the  noble  nature,  in  the  poet  its  author  ;  the  simple  25 
seems  the  grandest  when  we  attend  most  to  the 
exquisite  faculty,  to  the  poetical  gift.  But  the  simple 
is  no  doubt  to  be  preferred.  It  is  the  more  magical : 
in  the  other  there  is  something  intellectual,  something 
which  gives  scope  for  a  play  of  thought  which  may  30 

9  Ibid,  xxiii.  127. 


THE   GRAND   STYLE.  87 

exist  where  the  poetical  gift  is  either  wanting  or  pres- 
ent in  only  inferior  degree  :  the  severe  is  much  more 
imitable,  and  this  a  little  spoils  its  charm.  A  kind  of 
semblance  of  this  style  keeps  Young  going,  one  may 
5  say,  through  all  the  nine  parts  of  that  most  indifferent 
production,  the  Night  Thoughts.  But  the  grand  style 
in  simplicity  is  inimitable  : 

at(l)v  dtycpaKr/s 
oiiK  eyevr'  o$t'  AiaKida  irapa  Il^Xe?, 
IO  oijre  Trap'  avridiu  Kadfiy   Xtyovrat  p.a.v  fiporuv 

6\j3ov  inrtpraTov  oi  crx^v,  o'i  re  kclI  xPv(TaP-'n'VK(j)ii 
He\irop.evav  ei>  5pei  NouTav,  Kal  iv  eirTairvXois 
&Cov  Qrj(3ais  .   .   .  3 

There  is  a  limpidness  in  that,  a  want  of  salient  points 
15  to  seize  and  transfer,  which  makes  imitation  impos- 
sible, except  by  a  genius  akin  to  the  genius  which 
produced  it. — On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature  and  on 
Translating  Homer,  ed.  1895,  pp.  264-269. 

3  "  A  secure  time  fell  to  the  lot  neither  of  Peleus  the  son  of 
i'Eacus,  nor  of  the  godlike  Cadmus  ;  howbeit  these  are  said  to 
have  had,  of  all  mortals,  the  supreme  of  happiness,  who  heard 
the  golden-snooded  Muses  sing,  one  of  them  on  the  mountain 
(Pelion),  the  other  in  seven-gated  Thebes." 


5t#e  in  Xfterature. 

If  T  were  asked  where  English  poecry  got  these 
three  things,  its  turn  for  style,  its  turn  for  melan- 
choly, and  its  turn  for  natural  magic,  for  catching 
and  rendering  the  charm  of  nature  in  a  wonderfully 
near  and  vivid  way, — I  should  answer,  with  some  5 
doubt,  that  it  got  much  of  its  turn  for  style  from  a 
Celtic  source  ;  with  less  doubt,  that  it  got  much  of 
its  melancholy  from  a  Celtic  source  ;  with  no  doubt 
at  all,  that  from  a  Celtic  source  it  got  nearly  all  its 
natural  magic.  I0 

Any  German  with  penetration  and  tact  in  matters 
of  literary  criticism  will  own  that  the  principal  de- 
ficiency of  German  poetry  is  in  style  ;  that  for  style, 
in  the  highest  sense,  it  shows  but  little  feeling.  Take 
the  eminent  masters  of  style,  the  poets  who  best  give  15 
the  idea  of  what  the  peculiar  power  which  lies  in 
style  is, — Pindar,  Virgil,  Dante,  Milton.  An  example 
of  the  peculiar  effect  which  these  poets  produce,  you 
can  hardly  give  from  German  poetry.  Examples 
enough  you  can  give  from  German  poetry  of  the  20 
effect  produced  by  genius,  thought,  and  feeling  ex- 
pressing themselves  in  clear  language,  simple  lan- 
guage, passionate  language,  eloquent  language,  with 
harmony  and  melody  ;  but  not  of  the  peculiar  effect 
exercised  by  eminent  power  of  style.  Every  reader  25 
of  Dante  can  at  once  call  to  mind  what  the  peculiar 

88 


STYLE  IN  LITERATURE.  89 

effect  I  mean  is  ;  I  spoke  of  it  in  my  lectures  on 
translating  Homer,  and  there  I  took  an  example  of 
it  from  Dante,  who  perhaps  manifests  it  more  emi- 
nently than  any  other  poet.  But  from  Milton,  too, 
5  one  may  take  examples  of  it  abundantly  ;  compare 
this  from  Milton  : 

.     .     .     .     nor  sometimes  forget 
Those  other  two  equal  with  me  in  fate, 
So  were  I  equall'd  with  them  in  renown, 
|o  Blind  Thamyris  and  blind  Mseonides — ■ 

with  this  from  Goethe  : 

Es  bildet  ein  Talent  sich  in  der  Stille, 
Sich  ein  Character  in  dem  Strom  der  Welt. 

Nothing  can  be  better  in  its  way  than  the  style  in 

15  which  Goethe  there  presents  his  thought,  but  it  is 
the  style  of  prose  as  much  as  of  poetry  ;  it  is  lucid, 
harmonious,  earnest,  eloquent,  but  it  has  not  received 
that  peculiar  kneading,  heightening,  and  recasting 
which  is  observable  in  the  style  of  the  passage  from 

20  Milton, — a  style  which  seems  to  have  for  its  cause  a 
certain  pressure  of  emotion,  and  an  ever-surging,  yet 
bridled,  excitement  in  the  poet,  giving  a  special 
intensity  to  his  way  of  delivering  himself.  In  poetical 
races   and   epochs   this  turn    for   style   is   peculiarly 

»5  observable  ;  and  perhaps  it  is  only  on  condition  of 
having  this  somewhat  heightened  and  difficult  man- 
ner, so  different  from  the  plain  manner  of  prose,  that 
poetry  gets  the  privilege  of  being  loosed,  at  its  best 
moments,  into    that    perfectly    simple,    limpid    style, 

30  which  is  the  supreme  style  of  all,  but  the  simplicity 


90  STYLE  IN  LITERATURE. 

of  which  is  still  not  the  simplicity  of  prose.  The 
simplicity  of  Menander's  style  is  the  simplicity  of 
prose,  and  is  the  same  kind  of  simplicity  as  that 
which  Goethe's  style,  in  the  passage  I  have  quoted, 
exhibits  ;  but  Menander  does  not  belong  to  a  great  5 
poetical  moment,  he  comes  too  late  for  it  ;  it  is  the 
simple  passages  in  poets  like  Pindar  or  Dante  which 
are  perfect,  being  masterpieces  of  poetical  simplicity. 
One  may  say  the  same  of  the  simple  passages  in 
Shakspeare  ;  they  are  perfect,  their  simplicity  being  10 
a  poetical  simplicity.  They  are  the  golden,  easeful, 
crowning  moments  of  a  manner  which  is  always 
pitched  in  another  key  from  that  of  prose,  a  manner 
changed  and  heightened  ;  the  Elizabethan  style,  reg- 
nant in  most  of  our  dramatic  poetry  to  this  day,  is  15 
mainly  the  continuation  of  this  manner  of  Shak- 
speare's.  It  was  a  manner  much  more  turbid  and 
strewn  with  blemishes  than  the  manner  of  Pindar, 
Dante,  or  Milton  ;  often  it  was  detestable  ;  but  it 
owed  its  existence  to  Shakspeare's  instinctive  impulse  20 
towards  style  in  poetry,  to  his  native  sense  of  the 
necessity  for  it  ;  and  without  the  basis  of  style  every- 
where, faulty  though  it  may  in  some  places  be,  we 
should  not  have  had  the  beauty  of  expression,  unsur- 
passable for  effectiveness  and  charm,  which  is  reached  25 
in  Shakspeare's  best  passages.  The  turn  for  style  is 
perceptible  all  through  English  poetry,  proving,  to 
my  mind,  the  genuine  poetical  gift  of  the  race  ;  this 
turn  imparts  to  our  poetry  a  stamp  of  high  distinc- 
tion, and  sometimes  it  doubles  the  force  of  a  poet  not  30 
by  nature  of  the  very  highest  order,  such  as  Gray, 
and  raises  him   to  a  rank  beyond  what  his  natural 


STYLE   IN  LITERATURE.  91 

richness  and  power  seem  to  promise.  Goethe,  with 
his  fine  critical  perception,  saw  clearly  enough  both 
the  power  of  style  in  itself,  and  the  lack  of  style  in 
the  literature  of  his  own  country  ;  and  perhaps  if  we 
5  regard  him  solely  as  a  German,  not  as  a  European, 
his  great  work  was  that  he  labored  all  his  life  to  im- 
part style  into  German  literature,  and  firmly  to  estab- 
lish it  there.  Hence  the  immense  importance  to 
him  of  the  world  of  classical  art,  and  of  the  produc- 

iotions  of  Greek  or  Latin  genius,  where  style  so  emi- 
nently manifests  its  power.  Had  he  found  in  the 
German  genius  and  literature  an  element  of  style 
existing  by  nature  and  ready  to  his  hand,  half  his 
work,  one  may  say,  would  have  been  saved  him,  and 

15  he  might  have  done  much  more  in  poetry.  But  as  it 
was,  he  had  to  try  and  create,  out  of  his  own  powers, 
a  style  for  German  poetry,  as  well  as  to  provide  con- 
tents for  this  style  to  carry  ;  and  thus  his  labour  as  a 
poet  was  doubled. 

20  It  is  to  be  observed  that  power  of  style,  in  the 
sense  in  which  I  am  here  speaking  of  style,  is  some- 
thing quite  different  from  the  power  of  idiomatic, 
simple,  nervous,  racy  expression,  such  as  the  expres- 
sion of  healthy,  robust  natures    so   often  is,  such  as 

25  Luther's  was  in  a  striking  degree.  Style,  in  my  sense 
of  the  word,  is  a  peculiar  recasting  and  heightening, 
under  a  certain  condition  of  spiritual  excitement,  of 
what  a  man  has  to  say,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  add 
dignity  and  distinction  to  it  ;  and  dignity  and  distinc- 

3otion  are  not  terms  which  suit  many  acts  or  words  of 
Luther.  Deeply  touched  with  the  Gemeinheit  which 
is  the  bane  of  his  nation,  as  he  is  at  the  same  time  a 


92  STYLE   IN  LITERATURE. 

grand  example  of  the  honesty  which  is  his  nation's 
excellence,  he  can  seldom  even  show  himself  brave, 
resolute,  and  truthful,  without  showing  a  strong  dash 
of  coarseness  and  commonness  all  the  while  ;  the 
right  definition  of  Luther,  as  of  our  own  Banyan,  is  5 
that  he  is  a  Philistine  of  genius.  So  Luther's  sincere 
idiomatic  German, — such  language  as  this  :  "  Hilf 
lieber  Gott,  wie  manchen  Jammer  habe  ich  gesehen, 
dass  der  gemeine  Mann  doch  so  gar  nichts  weiss  von 
der  christlichen  Lehre  !  " — no  more  proves  a  power  of  u 
style  in  German  literature,  than  Cobbett's  sinewy 
idiomatic  English  proves  it  in  English  literature. 
Power  of  style,  properly  so  called,  as  manifested  in 
masters  of  style  like  Dante  or  Milton  in  poetry, 
Cicero,  Bossuet,  or  Bolingbroke  in  prose,  is  something  15 
quite  different,  and  has,  as  I  have  said,  for  its  charac- 
teristic effect,  this  :  to  add  dignity  and  distinction. — 
On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature,  ed.  1895,  pp.  102-107. 


IRature  in  Bnglfsb  fl>oetrg. 

The  Celt's  quick  feeling  for  what  is  noble  and 
distinguished  gave  his  poetry  style  ;  his  indomitable 
personality  gave  it  pride  and  passion  ;  his  sensibility 
and  nervous  exaltation  gave  it  a  better  gift  still,  the 
5  gift  of  rendering  with  wonderful  felicity  the  magical 
charm  of  nature.  The  forest  solitude,  the  bubbling 
spring,  the  wild  flowers,  are  everywhere  in  romance. 
They  have  a  mysterious  life  and  grace  there  ;  they 
are  Nature's  own  children,  and  utter  her  secret  in  a 

jo  way  which  make  them  something  quite  different  from 
the  woods,  waters,  and  plants  of  Greek  and  Latin 
poetry.  Now  of  this  delicate  magic,  Celtic  romance 
is  so  pre-eminent  a  mistress,  that  it  seems  impossible 
to  believe  the  power  did   not  come  into  romance  from 

15  the  Celts.1  Magic  is  just  the  word  for  it, — the  magic 
of  nature  ;  not  merely  the  beauty  of  nature, — that  the 
Greeks  and  Latins  had  ;  not  merely  an  honest  smack 
of  the  soil,  a  faithful  realism, — that  the  Germans  had  • 
but  the  intimate  life  of  Nature,  her  weird  power  and 

20  her  fairy  charm.  As  the  Saxon  names  of  places,  with 
the  pleasant  wholesome  smack  of  the  soil  in  them, — 

1  Rhyme, — the  most  striking  characteristic  of  our  modern  poetry 
as  distinguished  from  that  of  the  ancients,  and  a  main  source,  to 
our  poetry,  of  its  magic  and  charm,  of  what  we  call  its  romantit 
element, — rhyme  itself,  all  the  weight  of  evidence  tends  to  show, 
comes  into  our  poetry  from  the  Celts. 

93 


94  NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  POE  TR  V. 

Weathersfield,  Thaxted,  Shalford, — are  to  the  Celtic 
names  of  places,  with  their  penetrating,  lofty  beauty, — 
Velindra,  Tyntagel,  Caernarvon, — so  is  the  homely 
realism  of  German  and  Norse  nature  to  the  fairy-like 
loveliness  of  Celtic  nature.  Gwydion  wants  a  wife  5 
for  his  pupil :  "  Well,"  says  Math,  "  we  will  seek,  I 
and  thou,  by  charms  and  illusions,  to  form  a  wife  for 
him  out  of  flowers.  So  they  took  the  blossoms  of  the 
oak,  and  the  blossoms  of  the  broom,  and  the  blossoms 
of  the  meadow-sweet,  and  produced  from  them  a  10 
maiden,  the  fairest  and  most  graceful  that  man  ever 
saw.  And  they  baptized  her,  and  gave  her  the  name 
of  Flower-Aspect."  Celtic  romance  is  full  of  exquisite 
touches  like  that,  showing  the  delicacy  of  the  Celt's 
feeling  in  these  matters,  and  how  deeply  Nature  lets  15 
him  come  into  her  secrets.  The  quick  dropping  of 
blood  is  called  "  faster  than  the  fall  of  the  dewdrop 
from  the  blade  of  reed-grass  upon  the  earth,  when 
the  dew  of  June  is  at  the  heaviest."  And  thus  is 
Olwen  described  :  "  More  yellow  was  her  hair  than  20 
the  flower  of  the  broom,  and  her  skin  was  whiter  than 
the  foam  of  the  wave,  and  fairer  were  her  hands 
and  her  fingers  than  the  blossoms  of  the  wood- 
anemony  amidst  the  spray  of  the  meadow  foun- 
tains." For  loveliness  it  would  be  hard  to  beat  25 
that  ;  and  for  magical  clearness  and  nearness  take 
the  following  : — 

"And  in   the   evening   Peredur   entered   a  valley, 
and  at  the  head  of  the  valley  he  came  to  a  hermit's 
cell,  and  the  hermit  welcomed  him  gladly,  and  there  30 
he  spent  the  night.     And    in  the  morning  he  arose, 
and  when  he  went  forth,  behold,  a  shower  of  snow 


NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  POETR  Y.  95 

had  fallen  the  night  before,  and  a  hawk  had  killed  a 
wild-fowl  in  front  of  the  cell.  And  the  noise  of  the 
horse  scared  the  hawk  away,  and  a  raven  alighted 
upon  the  bird.  And  Peredur  stood  and  compared 
5  the  blackness  of  the  raven,  and  the  whiteness  of  the 
snow,  and  the  redness  of  the  blood,  to  the  hair  of  the 
lady  whom  best  he  loved,  which  was  blacker  than 
the  raven,  and  to  her  skin,  which  was  whiter  than 
the   snow,  and  to  her  two  cheeks,  which   were  redder 

10  than  the  blood  upon  the  snow  appeared  to  be." 

And  this,  which  is  perhaps  less  striking,  is  not  less 
beautiful  : — 

"And  early  in  the  day  Geraint  and  Enid  left  the 
wood,    and    they   came   to    an    open    country,    with 

15  meadows  on  one  hand  and  mowers  mowing  the 
meadows.  And  there  was  a  river  before  them,  and 
the  horses  bent  down  and  drank  the  water.  And 
they  went  up  out  of  the  river  by  a  steep  bank,  and 
there   they    met   a   slender  stripling    with    a   satchel 

20 about  his  neck;  and  he  had  a  small  blue  pitcher  in 
his  hand,  and  a  bowl  on  the  mouth  of  the  pitcher." 

And  here  the  landscape,  up  to  this  point  so  Greek 
in  its  clear  beauty,  is  suddenly  magicalised  by  the 
romance  touch  : — 

35  'And  they  saw  a  tall  tree  by  the  side  of  the  river, 
one-half  of  which  was  in  flames  from  the  root  to  the 
top,  and  the  other  half  was  green  and  in  full  leaf." 

Magic  is  the  word  to  insist  upon, — a  magically 
vivid  and  near  interpretation  of  nature  ;  since  it  is 

30  this  which  constitutes  the  special  charm  and  power 
of  the  effect  I  am  calling  attention  to,  and  it  is  for 
this   that   the  Celt's  sensibility  gives  him  a  peculiar 


o6  NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  FOE  TR  Y. 

aptitude.  But  the  matter  needs  rather  fine  handling, 
and  it  is  easy  to  make  mistakes  here  in  our  criticism. 
In  the  first  place,  Europe  tends  constantly  to  become 
more  and  more  one  community,  and  we  tend  to 
become  Europeans  instead  of  merely  Englishmen,  5 
Frenchmen,  Germans,  Italians  ;  so  whatever  aptitude 
or  felicity  one  people  imparts  into  spiritual  work, 
gets  imitated  by  the  others,  and  thus  tends  to  become 
the  common  property  of  all.  Therefore  anything  so 
beautiful  and  attractive  as  the  natural  magic  I  am  ia 
speaking  of,  is  sure,  nowadays,  if  it  appears  in  the 
productions  of  the  Celts,  or  of  the  English,  or  of  the 
French,  to  appear  in  the  productions  of  the  Germans 
also,  or  in  the  productibns  of  the  Italians  ;  but  there 
will  be  a  stamp  of  perfectness  and  inimitableness  15 
about  it  in  the  literatures  where  it  is  native,  which  it 
will  not  have  in  the  literatures  where  it  is  not  native. 
Novalis  or  Riickert,  for  instance,  have  their  eye  fixed 
on  nature,  and  have  undoubtedly  a  feeling  for  natural 
magic  ;  a  rough-and-ready  critic  easily  credits  them  20 
and  the  Germans  with  the  Celtic  fineness  of  tact,  the 
Celtic  nearness  to  Nature  and  her  secret ;  but  the 
question  is  whether  the  strokes  in  the  German's 
picture  of  nature8  have  ever  the  indefinable  delicacy, 

2  Take  the  following  attempt  to  render  the  natural  magic  sup- 
posed to  pervade  Tieck's  poetry: — 'In  diesen  Dichtungen 
herrscht  eine  geheimnissvolle  Innigkeit,  ein  sonderbares  Einver- 
standniss  mit  der  Natur,  besonders  mit  der  Pflanzen-  und  Stein- 
reich.  Der  Leser  fiihlt  sich  da  wie  in  einem  verzauberten 
Walde  ;  er  hort  die  unterirdischen  Quellen  melodisch  rauschen  ; 
wildfremde  Wunderblumen  schauen  ihn  an  mit  ihren  bunten 
sehnsiichtigen  Augen  ;  unsichtbare  Lippen  kiissen  seine  Wangen 
mit   neckender   Zartlichkeit ;    hohe  Pilze,    wie  goldne   Glocken, 


NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  POE  TR  Y.  97 

charm,  and  perfection  of  the  Celt's  touch  in  the  pieces 
I  just  now  quoted,  or  of  Shakspeare's  touch  in  his 
daffodil,  Wordsworth's  in  his  cuckoo,  Keats's  in  his 
Autumn,  Obermann's  in  his  mountain  birch-tree  or 
5  his  Easter-daisy  among  the  Swiss  farms.  To  decide 
where  the  gift  for  natural  magic  originally  lies, 
whether  it  is  properly  Celtic  or  Germanic,  we  must 
decide  this  question.  /   ee^^juJbU^^eJL, 

In    the    second    place,    there  (are    maiwTwflys*  of 

10  handling   n^tur^jsx^p^  are    nbttftferfyMftncenred 
with   one,  ofjtheni^^ui   a    roifehlland-readji    critic 
imaginSf  tlwtAPi&jfilAfc?  same\o  fii%^« ^Nature 
is  handl^^gfttfil^  fJlV%to'  draL  tpVtf^^jjW^L-Q. 
tinction  between^io^^ojLhandlii\g  her.  ^BuTInese 

15  modes  are  many!;  Iwill  mention  four  of  them  Stow  : 
there  is  the  conventional  way  of  handling  nature, 
there  is  the  faithful  way  of  handling  nature,  there  is 
the  Greek  way  of  handling  nature,  there  is  the 
magical  way  of  handling  nature.     In  all  these  three 

20 last  the  eye  is  on  the  object,  but  with  a  difference; 
in  the  faithful  way  of  handling  nature,  the  eye  is  on 
the  object,  and  that  is  all  you  can  say  ;  in  the  Greek, 
the  eye  is  on  the  object,  but  lightness  and  brightness 
are  added  ;  in  the  magical,  the  eye  is  on  the  object, 

wachsen  klingend  empor  am  Fusse  der  Baume ; "  and  so  on. 
Now  that  stroke  of  the  hohe  Pilze,  the  great  funguses,  would 
have  been  impossible  to  the  tact  and  delicacy  of  a  born  lover  of 
nature  like  the  Celt,  and  could  only  have  come  from  a  German 
who  has  hineinstudirt  himself  into  natural  magic.  It  is  a  crying 
false  note,  which  carries  us  at  once  out  of  the  world  of  nature- 
magic  and  the  breath  of  the  woods,  into  the  world  of  theatre- 
magic  and  the  smell  of  gas  and  orange-peel. 


98  NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  FOE  TR  V. 

but  charm  and  magic  are  added.  In  the  conventional 
way  of  handling  nature,  the  eye  is  not  on  the  object ; 
what  that  means  we  all  know,  we  have  only  to  think 
of  our  eighteenth-century  poetry  : — 

"  As  when  the  moon,  refulgent  lamp  of  night" —  5 

to  call  up  any  number  of  instances.  Latin  poetry 
supplies  plenty  of  instances  too  ;  if  we  put  this  from 
Propertius's  Hylas : — 

.     .     .     "  manus  heroum     .... 

Mollia  camposita  litora  fronde  tegit  " —  10 

side  by  side  the  line  of  Theocritus  by  which  it  was 
suggested  : — 

"  Aei/xwv  yap  crcpiv  e/ceiro  /xiyas,  (rTt^ddecrffiv  6veiap  " — 

we  get  at  the  same  moment  a  good  specimen  both  of 
the  conventional  and  of   the  Greek  way  of  handling  15 
nature.     But  from  our  own  poetry  we  may  get  speci- 
mens of  the  Greek  way  of  handling  nature,  as  well  as 
of  the  conventional :  for  instance,  Keats's  : — 

"  What  little  town,  by  river  or  seashore, 

Or  mountain-built  with  quiet  citadel,  20 

Is  emptied  of  its  folk,  this  pious  morn?" 

is  Greek,  as  Greek  as  a  thing  from  Homer  or  The- 
ocritus ;  it  is  composed  with  the  eye  on  the  object,  a 
radiancy  and  light  clearness  being  added.  German 
poetry  abounds  in  specimens  of  the  faithful  way  of  25 
handling  nature  ;  an  excellent  example  is  to  be  found 
in  the  stanzas  called  Zueignutig,  prefixed  to  Goethe's 
poems ;    the  morning   walk,  the  mist,  the   dew,   the 


NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  FOE  TEY.  99 

sun,  are  as  faithful  as  they  can  be,  they  are  given 
with  the  eye  on  the  object,  but  there  the  merit  of 
the  work,  as  a  handling  of  nature,  stops  ;  neither 
Greek  radiance  nor  Celtic  magic  is  added  ;  the  power 
5  of  these  is  not  what  gives  the  poem  in  question  its 
merit,  but  a  power  of  quite  another  kind,  a  power  of 
moral  and  spiritual  emotion.  But  the  power  of  Greek 
radiance  Goethe  could  give  to  his  handling  of  nature, 
and  nobly  too,  as  any  one  who  will  read  his  Wanderer, 

10 — the  poem  in  which  a  wanderer  falls  in  with  a 
peasant  woman  and  her  child  by  their  hut,  built  out 
of  the  ruins  of  a  temple  near  Cuma, — may  see.  Only 
the  power  of  natural  magic  Goethe,  does  not,  I  think, 
give  ;  whereas  Keats  passes  at  will  from  the  Greek 

15  power  to  that  power  which  is,  as  I  say,  Celtic  ;  from 
his  : — 

"  What  little  town,  by  river  or  seashore  " — 

to  his  : — 

"  White  hawthorn  and  the  pastoral  eglantine, 
20  Fast-fading  violets  cover'd  up  in  leaves  " — 

or  his  : — 

.     .     .     "  magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  fairy  .lands  forlorn  " — 

in  which  the  very  same  note    is    struck  as  in    those 
25  extracts    which  I  quoted    from  Celtic    romance,  and 

struck  with  authentic  and  unmistakable  power. 

Shakspeare,  in  handling  nature,  touches  this  Celtic 

note  so  exquisitely,  that  perhaps  one  is  inclined  to 

be  always  looking  for  the  Celtic  note  in  him,  and  not 
30  to  recognise  his  Greek  note  when  it  comes.     But  if 

one  attends  well    to  the  difference  between  the  two 


IOC  NA  TURE  IN  ENGLISH  POETR  Y. 

notes,  and  bears  in  mind,  to  guide  one,  such  things 
as  Virgil's  "  moss-grown  springs  and  grass  softer  than 
sleep  ": — 

"  Muscosi  fontes  et  somno  mollior  herba  " — 

as  his  charming  flower-gatherer,  who  : —  5 

"  Pallentes  violas  et  summa  papavera  carpens 

Narcissum  et  florem  jungit  bene  olentis  anethi " — 

as  his  quinces  and  chestnuts  : — 

.     .     .     "  cana  legam  tenera  lanugine  mala 

Castaneasque  nuces  " 10 

then,  I  think,  we  shall  be  disposed  to  say  that  in 
Shakspeare's : — 

"  I  know  a  bank  where  the  wild  thyme  blows, 
Where  oxlips  and  the  nodding  violet  grows, 
Quite  over-canopied  with  lucious  woodbine,  15 

With  sweet  musk-roses  and  with  eglantine  " — 

it   is   mainly  a  Greek   note  which  is  struck.     Then, 

again  in  his  : — 

"  look  how  the  floor  of  heaven 

Is  thick  inlaid  with  patines  of  bright  gold  !  " —  20 

we  are  at  the  very  point  of  transition  from  the  Greek 
note  to  the  Celtic  ;  there  is  the  Greek  clearness  and 
brightness,  with  the  Celtic  aerialness  and  magic  com- 
ing in.  Then  we  have  the  sheer,  inimitable  Celtic 
note  in  passages  like  this  : —  25 

"  Met  we  on  hill,  in  dale,  forest  or  mead, 
By  paved  fountain  or  by  rushy  brook, 
Or  in  the  beached  margent  of  the  sea  " — 


NATURE  IN  ENGLISH   POETRY.  ioi 

or  this,  the  last  I  will  quote  : — 

"  The  moon  shines  bright.     In  such  a  night  as  this, 
When  the  wind  did  gently  kiss  the  trees, 
And  they  did  make  no  noise,  in  such  a  night 
5  Troilus,  methinks,  mounted  the  Trojan  walls — 

"  in  such  a  night 

Did  Thisbe  fearfully  o'ertrip  the  dew — 

"  in  such  a  night 

Stood  Dido,  with  a  willow  in  her  hand, 
10  Upon  the  wild  sea-banks,  and  waved  her  love 

To  come  again  to  Carthage." 

And  those  last  lines  of  all  are  so  drenched  and  in- 
toxicated with  the  fairy-dew  of  that  natural  magic 
which  is  our  theme,  that  I  cannot  do  better  than  end 
15  with  them. — On  tlie  Study  of  Celtic  Literature,  ed. 
1895,   pp.    120-128. 


Ipoetrg  anD  Science. 

The  grand  power  of  poetry  is  its  interpretative 
power  ;  by  which  I  mean,  not  a  power  of  drawing  out 
in  black  and  white  an  explanation  of  the  mystery  of 
the  universe,  but  the  power  of  so  dealing  with  things 
as  to  awaken  in  us  a  wonderfully  full,  new,  and  inti-  5 
mate  sense  of  them,  and  of  our  relations  with  them. 
When  this  sense  is  awakened  in  us,  as  to  objects  with- 
out us,  we  feel  ourselves  to  be  in  contact  with  the 
essential  nature  of  those  objects,  to  be  no  longer  be- 
wildered and  oppressed  by  them,  but  to  have  their  10 
secret,  and  to  be  in  harmony  with  them  ;  and  this 
feeling  calms  and  satisfies  us  as  no  other  can.  Poetry, 
indeed,  interprets  in  another  way  besides  this ;  but 
one  of  its  two  ways  of  interpreting,  of  exercising  its 
highest  power,  is  by  awakening  this  sense  in  us.  1 15 
will  not  now  inquire  whether  this  sense  is  illusive, 
whether  it  can  be  proved  not  to  be  illusive,  whether 
it  does  absolutely  make  us  possess  the  real  nature  of 
things  ;  all  I  say  is,  that  poetry  can  awaken  it  in  us, 
and  that  to  awaken  it  is  one  of  the  highest  powers  of  20 
poetry.  The  interpretations  of  science  do  not  give  us 
this  intimate  sense  of  objects  as  the  interpretations  of 
poetry  give  it ;  they  appeal  to  a  limited  faculty  and 
not  to  the  whole  man.  It  is  not  Linnaeus  or  Cavendish 
or  Cuvier  who  gives  us  the  true  sense  of  animals,  or  25 
water,  or  plants,  who  seizes  their  secret  for  us,  who 


POETRY  AND   SCIENCE.  103 

makes  us  participate  in  their  life  ;    it  is  Shakspeare, 

with  his 

"  daffodils 

That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 

5  The  winds  of  March  with  beauty  ; " 

it  is  Wordsworth,  with  his 

"  voice  ....  heard 
In  spring-time  from  the  cuckoo-bird, 
Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
10  Among  the  farthest  Hebrides  ; " 

it  is  Keats,  with  his 

"  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 
Of  cold  ablution  round  Earth's  human  shores  ; " 

it  is  Chateaubriand,  with  his,  "  cime  indetermine'e  des 
is/orets  j  "  it  is  Senancour,  with  his  mountain  birch-tree  : 
"  Cette  e'corce  blanche,  lisse  etcrevasse'e  ;  cette  tige  agreste  ; 
ces  branches  qui  s'inclinent  vers  la  terre  ;  la  mobilite  des 
feuilles,  et  tout  cet  abandon,  simplicite'  de  la  nature,  atti' 
tude  des  deserts." — Essays,  I.,  ed.  1896,  pp.  81-82. 


Xiteraturc  ano  Science. 

Practical  people  talk  with  a  smile  of  Plato  and  of 
his  absolute  ideas  ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that 
Plato's  ideas  do  often  seem  unpractical  and  impracti^ 
cablejjmd  especially  when  one  views  them  in  con- 
nexion with  the  life  of  a  great  work-a-day  world  like  5 
the  United  States.  The  necessary  staple  of  the  life 
of  such  a  world  Plato  regards  with  disdain  ;  handi- 
craft and  trade  and  the  working  professions  he 
regards  with  disdain  ;  but  what  becomes  of  the  life  of 
an  industrial  modern  community  if  you  take  handi-  ia 
craft  and  trade  and  the  working  professions  out  of  it? 
The  base  mechanic  arts  and  handicrafts,  says  Plato, 
bring  about  a  natural  weakness  in  the  principle  of 
excellence  in  a  man,  so  that  he  cannot  govern  the 
ignoble  growths  in  him,  but  nurses  them,  and  cannot  15 
understand  fostering  any  other.  Those  who  exercise 
such  arts  and  trades,  as  they  have  their  bodies,  he 
says  marred,  by  their  vulgar  businesses,  so  they  have 
their  souls,  too,  bowed  and  broken  by  them.  And  if 
one  of  these  uncomely  people  has  a  mind  to  seek  self-  20 
culture  and  philosophy,  Plato  compares  him  to  a  bald 
little  tinker,  who  has  scraped  together  money,  and 
has  got  his  release  from  service,  and  has  had  a  bath, 
and  bought  a  new  coat,  and  is  rigged  out  like  a  bride- 
groom about  to  marry  the  daughter  of  his  master  who  25 
has  fallen  into  poor  and  helpless  estate. 

104 


LITERATURE  AND    SCIENCE.  105 

Nor  do  the  working  professions  fare  any  better  than 
trade  at  the  hands  of  Plato.  He  draws  for  us  an 
inimitable  picture  of  the  working  lawyer,  and  of  his 
life  of  bondage  ;  he  shows  how  this  bondage  from  his 
5  youth  up  has  stunted  and  warped  him,  and  made  him 
small  and  crooked  of  soul,  encompassing  him  with 
difficulties  which  he  is  not  man  enough  to  rely  on 
justice  and  truth  as  means  to  encounter,  but  has 
recourse,    for   help    out   of   them,    to    falsehood    and 

10  wrong.     And    so,   says    Plato,  this    poor   creature   is 

bent  and  broken,  and    grows  up   from  boy  to   man 

without   a  particle   of    soundness   in   him,    although 

exceedingly  smart  and  clever  in  his  own  esteem. 

One  cannot  refuse  to  admire  the  artist  who  draws 

15  these  pictures.  But  we  say  to  ourselves  that  his  ideas 
show  the  influence  of  a  primitive  and  obsolete  order 
of  things,  when  the  warrior  caste  and  the  priestly 
caste  were  alone  in  honour,  and  the  humble  work  of 
the  world  was  done  by  slaves.    We  have  now  changed 

20  all  that;  thernodern  majority  consists  in  work,  as 
Emerson  declares  ;  and  in  work,  we  may  add,  princi- 
pally of  such  plain  and  dusty  kind  as  the  work  of 
cultivators  of  the  ground,  handicraftsmen,  men  of 
trade  and  business,  men  of  the  working  professions. 

25  Above  all  is  this  true  in  a  great  industrious  com- 
munity such  as  that  of  the  United  States. 

Now  education,  many  people  go  on  to  say,  is  still 
mainly  governed  by  the  ideas  of  men  like  Plato,  who 
lived   when    the    warrior    caste    and    the   priestly   or 

30  philosophical  class  were  alone  in  honour,  and  the 
really  useful  part  of  the  community  were  slaves.  It 
is  an  education  fitted  for  persons  of  leisure  in  such 


106  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

a  community.  This  education  passed  from  Greece 
and  Rome  to  the  feudal  communities  of  Europe, 
where  also  the  warrior  caste  and  the  priestly  caste 
were  alone  held  in  honour,  and  where  the  really 
useful  and  working  part  of  the  community,  though  5 
not  nominally  slaves  as  in  the  pagan  world,  were 
practically  not  much  better  off  than  slaves,  and  not 
more  seriously  regarded.  And  how  absurd  it  is, 
people  end  by  saying,  to  inflict  this  education  upon 
1  an  industrious  modern  community,  where  very  few  10 
indeed  are  persons  of  leisure,  and  the  mass  to  be  con- 
sidered has  not  leisure,  but  is  bound,  for  its  own  great 
good,  and  for  the  great  good  of  the  world  at  large,  to 
plain  labour  and  to  industrial  pursuits,  and  the  edu- 
cation  in  question  tends  necessarily  to  make  men  dis-  15 
satisfied  with  these  pursuits  and  unfitted  for  them  ! 

That  is  what  it  said.  So  far  I  must  defend  Plato, 
as  to  plead  that  his  view  of  education  and  studies  is 
in  the  general,  as  it  seems  to  me,  sound  enough,  and 
fitted  for  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  whatever  20 
their  pursuits  may  be.  /An  intelligent  man,"  says 
Plato,  "  will  prize  those  studies  which  result  in  his 
soul  getting  soberness,  righteousness,  and  wisdom, 
and  will  less  value  the  others?7  I  cannot  consider 
that  a  bad  description  of  the  aim  of  education,  and  of  25 
the  motives  which  should  govern  us  in  the  choice 
of  studies,  whether  we  are  preparing  ourselves  for 
a  hereditary  seat  in  the  English  House  of  Lords  or 
for  the  pork  trade  in  Chicago. 

Still  I  admit  that  Plato's  world  was  not  ours,  that  30 
his  scorn  of  trade  and  handicraft  is  fantastic,  that  he 
had  no  conception  of  a  great  industrial  community 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  1 07 

such  as  that  of  the  United  States,  and  that  such 
a  community  must  and  will  shape  its  education  to 
suit  its  own  needs.  If  the  usual  education  handed 
down  to  it  from  the  past  does  not  suit  it,  it  will  cer- 

5  tainly  before  long  drop  this  and  try  another.  The 
usual  education  in  the  past  has  been  mainly  literary. 
The  question  is  whether  the  studies  which  were  long 
supposed  to  be  the  best  for  all  of  us  are  practically 
the  best  now  ;  whether  others  are  not  better.     The 

10  tyranny  of  the  past,  many  think,  weighs  on  us  injuri- 
ously in  the  predominance  given  to  letters  in  educa- 
tion. The  question  is  raised  whether,  to  meet  the 
needs  of  our  modern  life,  the  predominance  ought 
not  now  to  pass  from  letters  to  science  ;  and  naturally 

15  the  question  is  nowhere  raised  with  more  energy  than 
here  in  the  United  States.  The  design  of  abasing 
what  is  called  "  mere  literary  instruction  and  educa- 
tion," and  of  exalting  what  is  called  "  sound,  ex- 
tensive, and  practical  scientific  knowledge,"  is,  in  this 

20  intensely  modern  world  of  the  United  States,  even 
more  perhaps  than  in  Europe,  a  very  popular  design, 
and  makes  great  and  rapid  progress. 

I  am  going  to  ask  whether  the  present  movement 
for   ousting   letters   from  their  old  predominance  in 

25  education,  and  for  transferring  the  predominance  in 
education  to  the  natural  sciences,  whether  this  brisk 
and  flourishing  movement  ought  to  prevail,  and 
whether  it  is  likely  that  in  the  end  it  really  will  pre- 
vail.    An  objection  may  be  raised  which  I  will  antici- 

30  pate.  My  own  studies  have  been  almost  wholly  in 
letters,  and  my  visits  to  the  field  of  the  natural 
sciences  have  been  very   slight  and  inadequate,  al- 


108  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

though  those  sciences  have  always  strongly  moved  my 
curiosity.  A  man  of  letters,  it  will  perhaps  be  said,  is 
not  competent  to  discuss  the  comparative  merits  of 
letters  and  natural  science  as  means  of  education. 
To  this  objection  I  reply,  first  of  all,  that  his  incom-  5 
petence,  if  he  attempts  the  discussion  but  is  really 
incompetent  for  it,  will  be  abundantly  visible  ;  nobody 
will  be  taken  in  ;  he  will  have  plenty  of  sharp 
observers  and  critics  to  save  mankind  from  that  dan- 
ger. But  the  line  I  am  going  to  follow  is,  as  you  will  10 
soon  discover,  so  extremely  simple,  that  perhaps  it 
may  be  followed  without  failure  even  by  one  who  for 
a  more  ambitious  line  of  discussion  would  be  quite 
incompetent. 

Some  of  you  may  possibly  remember  a  phrase  of  15 
mine  which  has  been  the   object  of  a  good  deal  of 
comment  ;    an  observation  to  the   effect  that  in  our 
culture,  the  aim  being  to  know  ourselves  and  the  world,    j\ 
we   have,  as   the  means  to  this   end,  to  know  the  best   \\ 
which  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world.     A  man  of  20 
science,  who  is  also  an  excellent  writer  and  the  very 
prince  of  debaters,  Professor  Huxley,  in  a  discourse 
at  the  opening  of  Sir  Josiah  Mason's  college  at  Bir- 
mingham, laying  hold  of  this  phrase,  expanded  it  by 
quoting  some  more  words  of  mine,  which  are  these  :  25 
"  The  civilised  world  is  to  be  regarded  as  now  being, 
for  intellectual  and  spiritual  purposes,  one  great  con- 
federation, bound  to  a  joint  action  and  working  to  a 
common  result  ;  and  whose  members  have  for  their 
proper   outfit   a   knowledge   of   Greek,    Roman,   and  30 
Eastern  antiquity,  and  of  one  another.     Special  local 
and  temporary  advantages  being  put  out  of  account, 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  109 

that  modern  nation  will  in  the  intellectual  and  spirit- 
ual sphere  make  most  progress,  which  most  thoroughly 
carries  out  this  programme." 

Now  on  my  phrase,  thus  enlarged,  Professor  Hux- 

5  ley  remarks  that  when  I  speak  of  the  above-mentioned 
knowledge  as  enabling  us  to  know  ourselves  and  the! 
world,    I    assert   literature   to   contain    the   materials^ 
which  suffice  for  thus  making  us  know  ourselves  and 
the  world.     But  it  is  not  by  any  means  clear,  says  he, 

10  that  after  having  learnt  all  which  ancient  and  modern 
literatures  have  to  tell  us,  we  have  laid  a  sufficiently 
broad  and  deep  foundation  for  that  criticism  of  life, 
that  knowlege  of  ourselves  and  the  world,  which  con- 
stitutes culture.     On  the  contrary,  Professor  Huxley 

15  declares  that  he  finds  himself  "  wholly  unable  to 
admit  that  either  nations  or  individuals  will  really 
advance,  if  their  outfit  draws  nothing  from  the  stores 
of  physical  science.  An  army  without  weapons  of 
precision,  and  with   no  particular  base  of  operations, 

20  might  more  hopefully  enter  upon  a  campaign  on  the 
Rhine,  than  a  man,  devoid  of  a  knowledge  of  what 
physical  science  has  done  in  the  last  century,  upon  a 
criticism  of  life." 

This  shows  how  needful  it  is  for  those  who  are  to 

25  discuss  any  matter  together,  to  have  a  common  under- 
standing as  to  the  sense  of  the  terms  they  employ, — 
how  needful,  and  how  difficult.  What  Professor 
Huxley  says,  implies  just  the  reproach  which  is  so 
often  brought  against  die  study  of  belles  lettres,  as  they 

30  are  called  :  that  the  study  is  an  elegant  one,  gut  slight 
and  ineffectual  ;  a  smattering  of  Greek  and  Latin  and 
other  ornamental   things,   of   little  use  for    any  one 


\ 


HO  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

whose  object  is  to  get  at  truth,  and  to  be  a  practical 
man.  So,  too,  M.  Renan  talks  of  the  "superficial 
humanism  "  of  a  school-course  which  treats  us  as  if 
we  were  all  going  to  be  poets,  writers,  preachers, 
orators,  and  he  opposes  this  humanism  to  positives 
science,  or  the  critical  searcli  after  truth.  And  there 
is  always  a  tendency  in  those  who  are  remonstrating 
against  the  predominance  of  letters  in  education,  to 
understand  by  letters  belles  letlres,  and  by  belles  lettres 
a  superficial  humanism,  the  opposite  of  science  or  true  10 
knowledge. 

But  when  we  talk  of  jcnowing  Greek  and  Roman 
antiquity,  for  instance,  which  is  the  knowledge  people 
have  called  the  humanities,  I  for  my  part  mean  a 
knowledge  which  is  something  more  than  a  super- 15 
ficial  humanism,  mainly  decorative.  "  I  call  all  teach- 
ing scientific"  says  Wolf,  the  critic  of  Homer,  "which 
is  systematically  laid  out  and  followed  up  to  its  origi- 
nal sources.  For  example  :  a  knowledge  of  classical 
antiquity  is  scientific  when  the  remains  of  classical  20 
antiquity  are  correctly  studied  in  the  original  lan- 
guages." There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Wolf  is  per- 
fectly right;  that  all  learning  is  scientific  which  is 
systematically  laid  out  and  followed  up  to  its  original 
sources,  and  that  a  genuine  humanism  is  scientific.        25 

When  I  speak  of  knowing  Greek  and  Roman  an- 
tiquity, therefore,  as  a  help  to  knowing  ourselves  and 
the  world,  I  mean  more  than  a  knowledge  of  so  much 
vocabulary,  so  much  grammar,  so  many  portions  of 
authors  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages,  I  mean  30 
knowing  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  their  life  and 
genius,  and   what  they  were  and  did   in   the  world  ; 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  in 

what  we  get  from  them,  and  what  is  its  value.  That, 
at  least,  is  the  ideal ;  and  when  we  talk  of  endeavour- 
ing to  know  Greek  and  Roman  antiquity,  as  a  help  to 
knowing  ourselves  and  the  world,  we  mean  endeavour- 

5  ing  so  to  know  them  as  to  satisfy  this  ideal,  however 
much  we  may  still  fall  short  of  it. 

The  same  also  as  to  knowing  our  own  and  other 
modern  nations,  with  the  like  aim  of  getting  to  under- 
stand  ourselves  and  the  world.     To  know  the   best 

iothat  has  been  thought  and  said  by  the  modern  nations, 
is  to  know,  says  Professor  Huxley,  "  only  what  modern 
literatures  have  to  tell  us  ;  it  is  the  criticism  of  life 
contained  in  modern  literature."  And  yet  "  the  dis- 
tinctive character  of  our  times,"  he   urges,  "  lies  in 

15  the  vast  and  constantly  increasing  part  which  is 
played  by  natural  knowledge."  And  how,  therefore, 
can  a  man,  devoid  of  knowledge  of  what  physical 
science  has  done  in  the  last  century,  enter  hopefully 
upon  a  criticism  of  modern  life  ? 

20  Let  us,  I  say,  be  agreed  about  the  meaning  of  the 
terms  we  are  using.  I  talk  of  knowing  the  best  which 
has  been  thought  and  uttered  in  the  world  ;  Professor 
Huxley  says  this  means  knowing  literature.  Litera- 
ture is  a  large  word  ;  it  may  mean  everything  written 

25  with  letters  or  printed  in  a  book.  Euclid's  Elements 
and  Newton's  Principia  are  thus  literature.  All 
knowledge  that  reaches  us  through  books  is  literature. 
But  by  literature  Professor  Huxley  means  belles  lettres. 
He   means  to  make   me  say,  that  knowing  the  best 

30  which  has  been  thought  and  said  by  the  modern 
nations  is  knowing  their  belles  lettres  and  no  more. 
And  this  is  no  sufficient  equipment,  he  argues,  for 


H2  LITERATURE   AND    SCIENCE. 

a  criticism  of  modern  life.     But  as  I  do  not  mean,  by  .■ 
knowing  ancient  Rome,  knowing  merely  more  or  less 
of  Latin  belles  lettres,  and  taking  no  account  of  Rome's 
military,  and  political,  and   legal,  and  administrative 
work    in    the    world  ;    and    as,    by   knowing   ancient  5 
Greece,  I   understand   knowing  her  as  the  giver  of 
Greek  art,  and  the  guide  to  a  free  and  right  use  of 
reason  and  to  scientific  method,  and  the  founder  of  our 
mathematics  and  physics  and  astronomy  and  biology, 
— I    understand    knowing    her   as   all    this,  and   not  iq 
merely  knowing  certain  Greek  poems,  and  histories, 
and  treatises,  and  speeches, — so  as  to  the  knowledge 
of  modern  nations  also.    By  knowing  modern  nations, 
I  mean  not  merely  knowing  their  belles  lettres,   but 
knowing  also  what  has   been   done  by  such  men  as  15 
Copernicus,  Galileo,  Newton,  Darwin.     "  Our  ances- 
tors learned,"  says  Professor  Huxley,  "that  the  earth 
is  the  centre  of  the  visible  universe,  and  that  man  is 
the  cynosure  of  things  terrestrial  ;  and  more  especially 
was  it   inculcated   that  the  course  of  nature   has  no  20 
fixed  order,  but  that  it  could  be,  and  constantly  was, 
altered."     But  for  us  now,  continues  Professor  Hux- 
ley, "  the  notions  of  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the 
world  entertained   by  our  forefathers  are  no   longer 
credible.     It  is  very  certain  that  the  earth  is  not  the  25 
chief  body  in  the  material  universe,  and  that  the  world 
is  not  subordinated  to  man's  use.     It  is  even  more  cer- 
tain that  nature  is  the  expression  of  a  definite  order, 
with  which  nothing  interferes."     "And  yet,"  he  cries, 
"the    purely   classical    education    advocated   by   the 30 
representatives  of  the  humanists  in  our  day  gives  no 
inkling  of  all  this  !  " 


LITERATURE  AND    SCIENCE.  1 13 

In  due  place  and  time  I  will  just  touch  upon  that 
vexed  question  of  classical  education  ;  but  at  present 
the  questionisas  to  what  is  meant  bv  knowing  the 
best  which  modern  nations  have  thought  and  said. 
5  iFTs  not  knowing  their  belles  lettres  merely  which  is 
meant.  To  know  Italian  belles  lettres  is  not  to  know 
Italy,  and  to  know  English  belles  lettres  is  not  to 
know  England.  Into  knowing  Italy  and  England 
there  comes  a  great  deal  more,  Galileo  and  Newton 

10  amongst  it.  The  reproach  of  being  a  superficial 
humanism,  a  tincture  of  belles  lettres,  may  attach  rightly 
enough  to  some  other  disciplines  ;  but  to  the  par- 
ticular discipline  recommended  when  I  proposed 
knowing  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  in 

15  the  world,  it  does  not  apply.  In  that  best  I  certainly 
include  what  in  modern  times  has  been  thought  and 
said  by  the  great  observers  and  knowers  of  nature. 

There    is,    therefore,    really    no    question    between 
Professor  Huxley  and  me  as  to  whether  knowing  the 

20  great  results  of  the  modern  scientific  study  of  nature 
is  not  required  as  a  part  of  our  culture,  as  well  as 
knowing  the  products  of  literature  and  art.  But  to 
follow  the  processes  by  which  those  results  are 
reached,  ought,  say  the  friends  of  physical  science,  to 

25  be  made  the  staple  of  education  for  the  bulk  of  man- 
kind. And  here  there  does  arise  a  question  between 
those  whom  Professor  Huxley  calls  with  playful  sar- 
casm "  the  Levites  of  culture,"  and  those  whom  the 
poor    humanist    is    sometimes    apt    to    regard    as   its 

30  Nebuchadnezzars. 

The  great  results  of  the  scientific  investigation  of 
nature  we  are  agreed  upon  knowing,  but  how  much 


H4  LITERATURE   AND    SCIENCE. 

of  our  study  are  we  bound  to  give  to  the  processes  by 
which  those  results  are  reached  ?     The  results  have3 
their  visible  bearing  on  human  life.     But  all  the  pro-! 
cesses,  too,  all  the  items  of  fact  by  which  those  results 
are   reached    and    established,    are   interesting.      All  i 
knowledge   is    interesting   to   a    wise   man,    and    the 
knowledge  of  nature  is  interesting  to  all  men.     It  is 
very  interesting  to  know,  that,  from  the  albuminous 
white  of  the  egg,  the  chick  in  the  egg  gets  the  materials 
for  its  flesh,  bones,  blood,  and  feathers  ;    while,  from  10 
the  fatty  yelk  of  the  egg,  it  gets  the  heat  and  energy 
which  enable  it  at  length  to  break  its  shell  and  begin 
the  world.     It  is  less  interesting,  perhaps,  but  still  it 
is  interesting,  to  know  that  when  a  taper  burns,  the 
wax    is    converted    into    carbonic    acid    and    water.  15 
Moreover,  it  is  quite  true  that  the  habit  of  dealing 
with  facts,  which  is  given  by  the  study  of  nature,  is, 
as  the  friends  of  physical  science  praise  it  for  being, 
an  excellent  discipline.     The  appeal,  in  the  study  of 
nature,  is  constantly  to  observation  and  experiment  ;  20 
not  only  is  it  said  that  the  thing  is  so,  but  we  can  be 
made  to  see  that  it  is  so.     Not  only  does  a  man  tell 
us  that  when  a  taper  burns  the  wax  is  converted  into 
carbonic  acid  and  water,  as  a  man  may  tell  us,  if  he 
likes,  that  Charon  is  punting  his   ferry-boat  on  the  25 
river  Styx,  or  that  Victor  Hugo  is  a  sublime  poet,  or 
Mr.  Gladstone  the  most  admirable  of  statesmen  ;    but 
we  are  made  to  see  that  the  conversion  into  carbonic 
acid  and  water  does  actually  happen.     This  reality  of 
natural  knowledge  it  is,  which  makes  the  friends  of  3° 
physical  science  contrast  it,  as  a  knowledge  of  things, 
with  the  humanist's  knowledge,  which  is,  they  say,  a 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  1 15 

knowledge  of  words.  And  hence  Professor  Huxley 
is  moved  to  lay  it  down  that,  "  for  the  purpose  of 
attaining  real  culture,  an  exclusively  scientific  educa- 
tion is  at  least  as  effectual  as  an  exclusively  literary 

5  education."  And  a  certain  President  of  the  Section 
for  Mechanical  Science  in  the  British  Association  is, 
in  Scripture  phrase,  "  very  bold,"  and  declares  that  if 
a  man,  in  his  mental  training,  "  has  substituted  litera- 
ture and  history   for  natural  science,  he  has  chosen 

10  the  less  useful  alternative."  But  whether  we  go  these 
lengths  or  not,  we  must  all  admit  that  in  natural 
science  the  habit  gained  of  dealing  with  facts  is  a 
most  valuable  discipline,  and  that  every  one  should 
have  some  experience  of  it. 

15  More  than  this,  however,  is  demanded  by  the 
reformers.  It  is  proposed  to  make  the  training  in 
natural  science  the  main  part  of  education,  for  the 
great  majority  of  mankind  at  any  rate.  And  here,  I 
confess,  I  part  company  with  the  friends  of  physical 

20  science,  with  whom  up  to  this  point  I  have  been 
agreeing.  In  differing  from  them,  however,  I  wish  to 
proceed  with  the  utmost  caution  and  diffidence.  The 
smallness  of  my  own  acquaintance  with  the  disciplines 
of  natural  science  is  ever  before  my  mind,  and  I  am 

25  fearful  of  doing  these  disciplines  an  injustice.  The 
ability  and  pugnacity  of  the  partisans  of  natural 
science  make  them  formidable  persons  to  contradict. 
The  tone  of  tenative  inquiry,  which  befits  a  being  of 
dim  faculties  and  bounded  knowledge,  is  the  tone  I 

30  would  wish  to  take  and  not  to  depart  from.  At 
present  it  seems  to  me,  that  those  who  are  for  giving 
to  natural  knowledge,  as  they  call  it,  the  chief  place 


Il6  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

in  the  education  of  the  majority  of  mankind,  leave 
one  important  thing  out  of  their  account  :  .the  con- 
stitution  of  human  nature.  But  I  put  this  forward  on 
the  strength  of  some  facts  not  at  all  recondite,  very 
far  from  it;  facts  capable  of  being  stated  in  the  5 
simplest  possible  fashion,  and  to  which,  if  I  so  state 
them,  the  man  of  science  will,  I  am  sure,  be  willing  to 
allow  their  due  weight. 

Deny  the  facts  altogether,  I  think,  he  hardly  can. 
He  can  hardly  deny,  that  when  we  set  ourselves  to  10 
enumerate  the  powers  which  go  to  the  building  up  of 
human  life,  and  say  that  they  are  the  power  of  conduct, 
the  power  of  intellect  and  knowledge,  the  power  of 
beauty,  and  the  power  of  social  life  and  manners, — he 
can  hardly  deny  that  this  scheme,  though  drawn  in  15 
rough  and  plain  lines  enough,  and  not  pretending  to 
scientific  exactness,  does  yet  give  a  fairly  true  repre- 
sentation of  the  matter.  Human  nature  is  built  up  by 
these  powers  ;  we  have  the  need  for  them  all.  When 
we  have  rightly  met  and  adjusted  the  claims  of  them  20 
all,  we  shall  then  be  in  a  fair  way  for  getting  soberness 
and  righteousness,  with  wisdom.  This  is  evident 
enough,  and  the  friends  of  physical  science  would  ad- 
mi.,  it. 

But  perhaps  they  may  not  have  sufficiently  observed  25 
another  thing  :  namely,  that  the  several  powers  just 
mentioned  are  not  isolated,  but  there  is,  in  the  gener- 
ality of  mankind,  a  perpetual  tendency  to  relate  them 
one  to  another  in  divers  ways.  With  one  such  way  of 
relating  them  I  am  particularly  concerned  now.  Fol-  33 
lowing  our  instinct  for  intellect  and  knowledge,  we 
acquire  pieces  of   knowledge  ;  and  presently,   in  the 


LITERATURE  A. YD   SCIENCE.  1 17 

generality  of  men,  there  arises  the  desire  to  relate 
these  pieces  of  knowledge  to  our  sense  for  conduct,  to 
our  sense  for  beauty, — and  there  is  weariness  and  dis- 
satisfaction if  the  desire  is  baulked.  Now  in  this 
5  desire  lies,  I  think,  the  strength  of  that  hold  which 
letters  have  upon  us. 

All  knowledge  is,  as  I  said  just  now,  interesting  ; 
and  even  items  of  knowledge  which  from  the  nature  of 
the  case  cannot  well  be  related,  but  must  stand  isolated 

10  in  our  thoughts,  have  their  interest.  Even  lists  of  ex- 
ceptions have  their  interest.  If  we  are  studying  Greek 
accents,  it  is  interesting  to  know  that  pais  and  pas,  and 
some  other  monosyllables  of  the  same  form  of  declen- 
sion, do  not  take  the  circumflex  upon  the  last  syllable 

15  of  the  genitive  plural,  but  vary,  in  this  respect,  from 
the  common  rule.  If  we  are  studying  physiology,  it  is 
interesting  to  know  that  the  pulmonary  artery  carries 
dark  blood  and  the  pulmonary  vein  carries  bright 
blood,    departing  in    this   respect    from  the  common 

20  rule  for  the  division  of  labour  between  the  veins  and 
the  arteries.  But  every  one  knows  how  we  seek  natur- 
ally to  combine  the  pieces  of  our  knowledge  together, 
to  bring  them  under  general  rules,  to  relate  them  to 
principles  ;    and   how  unsatisfactory  and  tiresome    it 

25  would  be  to  go  on  for  ever  learning  lists  of  exceptions, 
or  accumulating  items  of  fact  which  must  stand 
isolated. 

Well,  that  same  need  of  relating  our  knowledge, 
which  operates  here  within  the  sphere  of  our  knowl- 

30  edge  itself,  we  shall  find  operating,  also,  outside  that 
sphere.  \Ve  experience,  as  we  go  on  learning  and 
knowing, — the  vast  majority  of  us    experience, — the 


Il8  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

need  of  relating  what  we  have  learnt  and  known  to  the 
sense  which  we  have  in  us  for  conduct,  to  the  sense 
which  we  have  in  us  for  beauty._ 

A  certain  Greek  prophetess  of  Mantineia  in  Arca- 
dia, Diotima  by  name,  once  explained  to  the  philoso-  5 
pher  Socrates  that  love,  and  impulse,  and  bent  of  all 
kinds,  is,  in  fact,  nothing  else   but  the  desire  in  men 
that  good  should  for  ever  be  present  to  them.     This 
desire  for  good,  Diotima  assured  Socrates,  is  our  fun- 
damental desire,   of  which  fundamental  desire  every  10 
impulse  in  us  is  only  some  one  particular  form.     And 
therefore  this  fundamental  desire  it  is,  I  suppose, — this  ( 
desire  in  men  that  good  should  be  for  ever  present  to' 
them, — which  acts  in  us  when  we  feel  the  impulse  forj 
relating  our  knowledge  to  our  sense  for  conduct  and  15 
to  our  sense  for  beauty.     At  any  rate,  with  men  in 
general  the  instinct  exists.     Such    is   human    nature. 
And  the  instinct,  it  will  be  admitted,  is  innocent,  and 
human  nature  is  preserved  by  our  following  the  lead 
of  its  innocent  instincts.     Therefore,   in   seeking  to  20 
gratify  this  instinct  in  question,  we  are  following  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation  in  humanity. 

But,  no  doubt,  some  kinds  of  knowledge  cannot  b& 
made  to  directly  serve  the  instinct  in  question,  cannon- 
be  directly  related   to  the   sense   for    beauty,  to  the  25 
sense    for   conduct.       These    are    instrument-knowl- 
edges ;  they  lead  on  to  other  knowledges,  which  can. 
A  man  who  passes  his  life  in  instrument-knowledges 
is  a  specialist.     They   may  be    invaluable  as   instru- 
ments to  something  beyond,  for  those  who  have  the  30 
gift  thus   to   employ  them  ;    and  they  may  be  disci- 
plines in  themselves  wherein  it  is  useful  for  every  one 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  HO 

to  have  some  schooling.  But  it  is  inconceivable  that 
the  generality  of  men  should  pass  all  their  mental 
life  with  Greek  accents  or  with  formal  logic.  My 
friend  Professor    Sylvester,  who    is    one  of   the   first 

5  mathematicians  in  the  world,  holds  transcendental 
doctrines  as  to  the  virtue  of  mathematics,  but  those 
doctrines  are  not  for  common  men.  In  the  very 
Senate  House  and  heart  of  our  English  Cambridge 
I  once  ventured,  though  not  without  an   apology  for 

10  my  profaneness,  to  hazard  the  opinion  that  for  the 
majority  of  mankind  a  little  of  mathematics,  even. 
g°jrs.i!:  lo.nS AY^X.-  Of  course  this  is  quite  consistent 
with  their  being  of  immense  importance  as  an  instru- 
ment to  something  else  ;  but  it  is  the  few  who  have 

15  the  aptitude  for  thus  using  them,  not  the  bulk  of 
mankind. 

The  natural  sciences  do  not,  howevert  stand 
on  the  same  footing  with  these  instrument-knowl- 
edges.    Experience  shows  us  that   the  generality  of 

20  men  will  find  more  interest  in  learning  that,  when 
a  taper  burns,  the  wax  is  converted  into  carbonic 
acid  and  water,  or  in  learning  the  explanation  of  the 
phenomenon  of  dew,  or  in  learning  how  the  circula- 
tion of    the  blood    is   carried  on,  than    they  find   in 

25  learning  that  the  genitive  plural  of  pais  and/tfj  does 
not  take  the  circumflex  on  the  termination.  And  one 
piece  of  natural  knowledge  is  added  to  another,  and 
others  are  added  to  that,  and  at  last  we  come  to 
propositions   so   interesting  as   Mr.  Darwin's  famous 

30  proposition  that  "our  ancestor  was  a  hairy  quadruped 
furnished  with  a  tail  and  pointed  ears,  probably 
arboreal  in  his  habits."     Or  we  come  to  propositions 


120  LITERATURE   AND    SCIENCE. 

of  such  reach  and  magnitude  as  those  which  Profes- 
sor Huxley  delivers,  when  he  says  that  the  notions 
of  our  forefathers  about  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
the  world  were  all  wrong,  and  that  nature  is  the  expres- 
sion of  a  definite  order  with  which  nothing  interferes.  5 

Interesting,  indeed,  these  results  of  science  are, 
important  they  are,  and  we  should  all  of  us  be 
acquainted  with  them.  But  what  I  now  wish  you  to 
mark  is,  that  we  are  still,  when  they  are  propounded 
to  us  and  we  receive  them,  we  are  still  in  the  sphere  10 
of  intellect  and  knowledge.  And  for  the  generality 
of  men  there  will  be  found,  I  say,  to  arise,  when  they 
have  duly  taken  in  the  proposition  that  their  ancestor 
was  "  a  hairy  quadruped  furnished  with  a  tail  and 
pointed  ears,  probably  arboreal  in  his  habits,"  there  15 
will  be  found  to  arise  an  invincible  desire  to  relate 
this  proposition  to  the  sense  in  us  for  conduct,  and 
to  the  sense  in  us  for  beauty.  But  this  the  men  of 
science  will  not  do  for  us,  and  will  hardly  even  pro- 
fess to  do.  They  will  give  us  other  pieces  of  knowl-  20 
edge,  other  facts,  about  other  animals  and  their 
ancestors,  or  about  plants,  or  about  stones,  or  about 
stars  ;  and  they  may  finally  bring  us  to  those  great 
"  general  conceptions  of  the  universe,  which  are 
forced  upon  us  all,"  says  Professor  Huxley,  "by  the  25 
progress  of  physical  science."  But  still  it  will  be 
knowledge  only  which  they  give  us  ;  knowledge  not 
put  for  us  into  relation  with  our  sense  for  conduct, 
our  sense  for  beauty,  and  touched  with  emotion  by 
being  so  put  ;  not  thus  put  for  us,  and  therefore,  to  30 
the  majority  of  mankind,  after  a  certain  while,  un- 
satisfying, wearying. 


LITERATURE  A  AW   SCIENCE.  12 1 

Not  to  the  born  naturalist,  I  admit.  But  what  do 
we  mean  by  a  born  naturalist  ?  We  mean  a  man  in 
whom  the  zeal  for  observing  nature  is  so  uncom- 
monly strong  and  eminent,  that  it  marks  him  off  from 
5  the  bulk  of  mankind.  Such  a  man  will  pass  his  life 
happily  in  collecting  natural  knowledge  and  reasoning 
upon  it,  and  will  ask  for  nothing,  or  hardly  anything, 
more.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  the  sagacious  and 
admirable  naturalist  whom  we  lost  not  very  long  ago, 

10  Mr.  Darwin,  once  owned  to  a  friend  that  for  his  part 
he  did  not  experience  the  necessity  for  two  things 
which  most  men  find  so  necessary  to  them, — religion 
and  poetry  ;  science  and  the  domestic  affections,  he 
thought,  were  enough.     To  a  born  naturalist,  I  can 

15  well  understand  that  this  should  seem  so.  So  ab- 
sorbing is  his  occupation  with  nature,  so  strong  his 
love  for  his  occupation,  that  he  goes  on  acquiring 
natural  knowledge  and  reasoning  upon  it,  and  has 
little   time  or  inclination   for  thinking  about   getting 

20  it  related  to  the  desire  in  man  for  conduct,  the  desire 
in  man  for  beauty.  He  relates  it  to  them  for  himself 
as  he  goes  along,  so  far  as  he  feels  the  need  ;  and  he 
draws  from  the  domestic  affections  all  the  additional 
solace  necessary.     But   then   Darwins  are  extremely 

25  rare.  Another  great  and  admirable  master  of  natural 
knowledge,  Faraday,  was  a  Sandemanian.  That  is  to 
say,  he  related  his  knowledge  to  his  instinct  for  con- 
duct and  to  his  instinct  for  beauty,  by  the  aid  of 
that  respectable  Scottish  sectary,  Robert  Sandeman. 

30  And  so  strong,  in  general,  is  the  demand  of  religion 
and  poetry  to  have  their  share  in  a  man,  to  associate 
themselves   with    his    knowing,    and    to    relieve    and 


122  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

rejoice  it,  that  probably,  for  one  man  amongst  us  with 
the  disposition  to  do  as  Darwin  did  in  this  respect, 
there  are  at  least  fifty  with   the  disposition  to  do  asi 
Faraday. 

Education  lays  hold  upon  us,  in  fact,  by  satisfying  5 
this   demand.     Professor   Huxley  holds   up   to  scorn 
mediaeval  education,  with  its  neglect  of  the  knowledge 
of   nature,   its   poverty   even    of   literary    studies,   its       .  . 
formal  logic  devoted  to  "  showing  how  and  why  that  j^f 
which  the  Church  said  was  true  must  be  true."     But  ic 
the  great  mediaeval  universities  were  not  brought  into 
being,    we    may   be    sure,   by   the    zeal    for   giving   a 
jejune  and  contemptible  education.     Kings  have  been 
their  nursing  fathers,  and  queens  have  been  their  nurs- 
ing mothers,  but  not    for  this.     The  mediaeval  uni- 15 
versities    came    into    being,   because    the    supposed 
knowledge,  delivered  by  Scripture  and  the  Church,  so 
deeply  engaged  men's  hearts,  by  so  simply,  easily,  and 
powerfully  relating  itself  to  their  desire  for  conduct, 
their    desire   for   beauty.     All    other   knowledge   was  20 
dominated  by  this  supposed  knowledge  and  was  sub- 
ordinated to  it,  because  of  the  surpassing  strength  of 
the  hold  which  it  gained  upon  the  affections  of  men, 
by  allying  itself  profoundly  with  their  sense  for  con- 
duct, their  sense  for  beauty.  25 

But  now,  says  Professor  Huxley,  conceptions  of  the 
universe  fatal  to  the  notions  held  by  our  forefathers 
have  been  forced  upon  us  by  physical  science. 
Grant  to  him  that  they  are  thus  fatal,  that  the  new 
conceptions  must  and  will  soon  become  current  30 
everywhere,  and  that  every  one  will  finally  perceive 
them  to  be  fatal  to  the  beliefs  of  our  forefathers.     The 


(jLAJLI     tVM^u,»     GXXW'     "^X**-*- 

LITERATURE  AND    SCIENCE.  1 23 

need  of  humane  letters,  as  they  are  truly  called, 
because  they  serve  the  paramount  desire  in  men  that 
good  should  be  for  ever  present  to  them, — the  need_of 
humane  letters  to  establish  a  relation  between  the 
5  new  conceptions,  and  our  instinct  for  beauty,  our 
instinct  for  conduct,  is  only  the  more  visible.  The 
Middle  Age  could  do  without  humane  letters,  as  it 
could  do  without  the  study  of  nature,  because  its  sup- 
posed knowledge  was  made  to  engage  its  emotions  so 

10  powerfully.  Grant  that  the  supposed  knowledge  dis- 
appears, its  power  of  being  made  to  engage  the 
emotions  will  of  course  disappear  along  with  it, — but 
the  emotions  themselves,  and  their  claim  to  be 
engaged  and  satisfied,  will  remain.     Now  if  we  find  by 

15  experience  that  humane  letters  have  an  undeniable 
power  of  engaging  the  emotions,  the  importance  of  hu- 
mane letters  in  a  man's  training  becomes  not  less,  but 
greater,  in  proportion  to  the  success  of  modern  science 
in  extirpating  what  it  calls  "  mediaeval  thinking/^' 

20  Have  humane  letters,  then,  have  poetry  and  elo- 
quence, the  power  here  attributed  to  them  of  engaging 
the  emotions,  and  do  they  exercise  it  ?  And  if  they 
have  it  and  exercise  it,  how  do  they  exercise  it,  so  as 
to  exert  an  influence  upon  man's  sense  for  conduct, 

25  his  sense  for  beauty  ?  Finally,  even  if  they  both  can 
and  do  exert  an  influence  upon  the  sensgs  in  question, 
how  are  they  to  relate  to  them  the  results, — the 
modern  results, — of  natural  science  ?  All  these  ques- 
tions may  be  asked.     First,  have  poetry  and  eloquence 

30  the  power  of  calling  out  the  emotions?  The  appeal  is 
to  experience.  Experience  shows  that  for  the  vast 
majority  of  men,  for  mankind  in  general,  they  have  the 


iJrfdQjUuu-l 


124  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

power.  Next,  do  they  exercise  it  ?  They  do.  But 
then,  how  do  they  exercise  it  so  as  to  affect  man's 
sense  for  conduct,  his  sense  for  beauty  ?  And  this  is 
perhaps  a  case  for  applying  the  Preacher's  words  : 
"  Though  a  man  labour  to  seek  it  out,  yet  he  shall  not  5 
find  it  ;  yea,  farther,  though  a  wise  man  think  to  know 
it,  yet  shall  he  not  be  able  to  find  it."  '  Why  should  it 
be  one  thing,  in  its  effect  upon  the  emotions,  to  say, 
"  Patience  is  a  virtue,"  and  quite  another  thing,  in  its 
effect  upon  the  emotions,  to  say  with  Homer,  10 

tXtjtov  yap  Mo?pcu  Ov/ibv  6£<rav  avdpumoLGiv — 2 

"  for  an  enduring  heart  have  the  destinies  appointed 
to   the   children   of    men  "  ?     Why   should    it   be  one 
thing,  in  its  effect  upon  the  emotions,  to  say  with  the 
philosopher  Spinoza,  Felicitas  in  eo  cousistit  quod  homo  15 
stium  esse  conservare potest — "  Man's  happiness  consists 
in  his  being  able  to  preserve  his  own  essence,"  and 
quite  another  thing,  in  its  effect  upon  the  emotions,  to 
say  with  the  Gospel,  "What  is  a  man  advantaged,  if  he 
gain  the  whole  world,  and   lose  himself,  forfeit  him- 20 
self  ?  "     How  does  this  difference  of  effect  arise  ?     I 
cannot  tell,  and  I  am  not  much  concerned  to  know  ; 
the  important  thing  is  that  it  does  arise,  and  that  we 
can  profit  by  it.     But  how,  finally,  are  poetry  and  elo-j 
quence  to  exercise  the  power  of  relating  the  modern  125 
results  of  natural  science  to  man's  instinct  for  conduct,! 
his  instinct   for  beauty  ?     And   here   again   I  answer 
that  I  do  not  know  hotv  they  will  exercise  it,  but  that 
they  can   and  will  exercise  it  I  am   sure.     I  do  not 
mean   that   modern   philosophical   poets  and   modern  30 
1  Ecclesiastes,  viii.  17.  2  Iliad,  xxiv.  49. 


/ 


LITERATURE  AND    SCIENCE.  125 

philosophical  moralists  are  to  come  and  relate  for  us,  in 
express  terms,  the  results  of  modern  scientific  research 
to  our  instinct  for  conduct,  our  instinct  for  beauty. 
But  I  mean  that  we  shall  find,  as  a  matter  of  experi- 
5  ence,  if  we  know  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and 
uttered  in  the  world,  we  shall  find  that  the  art  and 
poetry  and  eloquence  of  men  who  lived,  perhaps,  long 
ago,  who  had  the  most  limited  natural  knowledge,  who 
had    the   most    erroneous    conceptions    about    many 

10  important  matters,  we  shall  find  that  this  art,  and 
poetry,  and  eloquence,  have  in  fact  not  only  the 
power  of  refreshing  and  delighting  us,  they  have  also 
the  power, — such  is  the  strength  and  worth,  in  essen- 
tials, of  their  authors'  criticism  of  life, — they  have  a 

15  fortifying,  and  elevating,  and  quickening,  and  sugges- 
tive  power,  capable  of  wonderfully  helping  us  to 
relate  the  results  of  modern  science  to  our  need  for 
conducLour  need  for  beauty.^Homer's  conceptions 
of  the  physical  universe  were,  I  imagine,  grotesque  ; 

20  but  really,  under  the  shock  of  hearing  from  modern 
science  that  "  the  world  is  not  subordinated  to  man's 
use,  and  that  man  is  not  the  cynosure  of  things  terres- 
trial," I  could,  for  my  own  part,  desire  no  better  com- 
fort than  Homer's  line  which  I  quoted  just  now, 

25  tXtjtov  yap  'M.oipai  6vp.bv  Oiaav  avdpil)Troi<Tt.v — = 

"  for  an  enduring  heart  have  the  destinies  appointed  to 
the  children  of  men  "  ! 

And   the  more   that   men's  minds  are  cleared,  the 

more  that  the  results  of  science  are  frankly  accepted, 

co  the    more    that   poetry   and    eloquence   come   to   be 

received   and   studied    as    what   in    truth    they   really 


126  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

are, — the  criticism  of  life  by  gifted  men,  alive  and 
active  with  extraordinary  power  at  an  unusual  number 
of  points  ; — so  much  the  more  will  the  value  of 
humane  letters,  and  of  art  also,  which  is  an  utterance 
having  a  like  kind  of  power  with  theirs,  be  felt  and  5 
acknowledged,  and  their  place  in  education  be  secured. 

Let  us  therefore,  all  of  us,  avoid  indeed  as  much  as 
possible  any  invidious  comparison  between  the  merits 
of  humane  letters,  as  means  of  education,  and  the 
merits  of  the  natural  sciences.  But  when  some  Presi-  ia 
dent  of  a  Section  for  Mechanical  Science  insists  on 
making  the  comparison,  and  tells  us  that  "he  who  in 
his  training  has  substituted  literature  and  history  for 
natural  science  has  chosen  the  less  useful  alternative," 
let  us  make  answer  to  him  that  the  student  of  humane  15 
letters  only,  will,  at  least,  know  also  the  great  general 
conceptions  brought  in  by  modern  physical  science  ; 
for  science,  as  Professor  Huxley  says,  forces  them 
upon  us  all.  But  the  student  of  the  natural  science^ 
only,  will,  by  our  very  hypothesis,  know  nothing  of  20 
humane  letters  ;  not  to  mention  that  in  setting  him- 
self to  be  perpetually  accumulating  natural  knowledge, 
he  sets  himself  to  do  what  only  specialists  have  in 
general  the  gift  for  doing  genially.  And  so  he  will 
probably  be  unsatisfied,  or  at  any  rate  incomplete,  and  25 
even  more  incomplete  than  the  student  of  humane 
letters  only. 

I  once  mentioned  in  a  school-report,  how  a  young 
man  in  one  of  our  English  training  colleges  having  to 
paraphrase  the  passage  in  Macbeth  beginning,  30 

"  Can'st  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased  ?" 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  1 27 

turned  this  line  into,  "  Can  you  not  wait  upon  the 
lunatic?"  And  I  remarked  what  a  curious  state  of 
things  it  would  be,  if  every  pupil  of  our  national 
schools  knew,  let  us  say,  that  the  moon  is  two  thou- 
5  sand  one  hundred  and  sixty  miles  in  diameter,  and 
thought  at  the  same  time  that  a  good  paraphrase  for 

"  Can'st  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased  ?  " 

was,  "Can  you  not  wait  upon  the  lunatic?"     If  one 
is  driven  to  choose,  I   think  I  would  rather   have  a 

10  young  person  ignorant  about  the  moon's  diameter, 
but  aware  that  "Can  you  not  wait  upon  the  lunatic  ?" 
is  bad,  than  a  young  person  whose  education  had 
been  such  as  to  manage  things  the  other  way. 

Or  to  go  higher  than  the  pupils    of  our  national 

15  schools.  I  have  in  my  mind's  eye  a  member  of  our 
British  Parliament  who  comes  to  travel  here  in 
America,  who  afterwards  relates  his  travels,  and  who 
shows  a  really  masterly  knowledge  of  the  geology  of 
this  great  country  and  of  its  mining  capabilities,  but 

20  who  ends  by  gravely  suggesting  that  the  United 
States  should  borrow  a  prince  from  our  Royal  Family, 
and  should  make  him  their  king,  and  should  create  a 
House  of  Lords  of  great  landed  proprietors  after  the 
pattern  of  ours  ;  and  then  America,  he  thinks,  would 

25  have  her  future  happily  and  perfectly  secured. 
Surely,  in  this  case,  the  President  of  the  Section  for 
Mechanical  Science  would  himself  hardly  say  that 
our  member  of  Parliament,  by  concentrating  himself 
upon   geology    and   mineralogy,  and  so   on,  and  not 

30 attending  to  literature  and  history,  had  "chosen  the 
more  useful  alternative." 


128  LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE. 

If  then  there  is  to  be  separation  and  option  between 
humane    letters    on    the    one    hand,  and    the  natura' 
sciences  on  the  other,  the  great  majority  of  mankind 
all  who  have  not  exceptional  and  overpowering  apti- 
tudes for  the  study  of  nature,  would  do  well,  I  cannot  5 
but  think,  to  choose  to  be  educated  in  humane  letters 
rather  than  in  the  natural  sciences.     Letters  will  call  f 
out  their  being  at  more  points,  will  make  them  live  \ 
more. 

I  said  that  before  I  ended   I  would  just  touch  on  10 
the  question   of  classical   education,  and   I  will   keep 
my  word.     Even  if  literature  is  to  retain  a  large  place 
in  our  education,  yet  Latin  and  Greek,  say  the  friends 
of  progress,  will  certainly  have  to  go.     Greek  is  the 
grand  offender  in  the  eyes  of  these  gentlemen.     The  15 
attackers  of  the  established  course  of  study  think  that 
against  Greek,  at  any  rate,  they  have  irresistible  argu- 
ments.    Literature  may  perhaps  be  needed  in  educa- 
tion, they  say  ;  but  why  on  earth  should  it  be  Greek 
literature  ?      Why   not    French    or    German  ?      Nay,  20 
"  has  not  an  Englishman  models  in  his  own  literature 
of  every  kind  of  excellence?  '     As  before,  it  is  not  on 
any  weak  pleadings  of  my  own  that  I  rely  for  con- 
vincing the  gainsayers  ;  it   is  on  the  constitution    of 
human  nature  itself,  and  on  the  instinct  of  self-preser-  25 
vation  in  humanity.     The  instinct  for  beauty  is  set  in 
human  nature,  as  surely  as  the  instinct  for  knowledge 
is   set    there,   or    the     instinct    for    conduct.     If    the 
instinct  for  beauty  is  served  by  Greek  literature  and 
art   as   it  is   served  by  no    other    literature  and    art, [30 
we  may  trust   to   the  instinct  of  self-preservation   in 
humanity  for  keeping  Greek  as  part  of  our  culture. 


\ 


LITERATURE  AND   SCIENCE.  1 29 

We  may  trust  to  it  for  even  making  the  study  of 
Greek  more  prevalent  than  it  is  now.  Greek  will 
come,  I  hope,  some  day  to  be  studied  more  rationally 
than  at  present  ;  but  it  will  be  increasingly  studied  as 
5  men  increasingly  feel  the  need  in  them  for  beauty, 
and  how  powerfully  Greek  art  and  Greek  literature 
can  serve  this  need.  Women  will  again  study  Greek, 
as  Lady  Jane  Grey  did  ;  I  believe  that  in  that  chain 
of  forts,  with  which  the  fair  host  of  the  Amazons  are 

10  now  engirdling  our  English  universities,  I  find  that 
here  in  America,  in  colleges  like  Smith  College  in 
Massachusetts,  and  Vassar  College  in  the  State  of 
New  York,  and  in  the  happy  families  of  the  mixed 
universities  out  West,  they  are  studying  it  already. 

15  Defuit  una  miJii  symmetria  prisca, — "  The  antique 
symmetry  was  the  one  thing  wanting  to  me,"  said 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  ;  and  he  was  an  Italian.  I 
will  not  presume  to  speak  for  the  Americans,  but 
I    am    sure    that,    in    the    Englishman,    the    want    of 

20  this  admirable  symmetry  of  the  Greeks  is  a  thou- 
sand times  more  great  and  crying  than  in  any  Italian. 
The  results  of  the  want  show  themselves  most  glar- 
ingly, perhaps,  in  our  architecture,  but  they  show 
themselves,  also,  in  all  our  art.     Fit  details  strictly  com- 

25  bined,  in  view  of  a  large  general  result  nobly  conceived ; 
that  is  just  the  beautiful  symmetria  prisca  of  the 
Greeks,  and  it  is  just  where  we  English  fail,  where  all 
our  art  fails.  Striking  ideas  we  have,  and  well- 
executed  details  we   have  ;   but  that   high  symmetry 

30  which,  with  satisfying  and  delightful  effect,  combines 
them,  we  seldom  or  never  have.  The  glorious 
beauty    of    the    Acropolis    at   Athens   did  not    come 


130  LITERATURE   AND    SCIENCE. 

from  single  fine  things  stuck  about  on  that  hill,  a 
statue  here,  a  gateway  there  ; — no,  it  arose  from  all 
things  being  perfectly  combined  for  a  supreme  total 
effect.  What  must  not  an  Englishman  feel  about  our 
deficiencies  in  this  respect,  as  the  sense  for  beauty,  5 
whereof  this  symmetry  is  an  essential  element,  awakens 
and  strengthens  within  him  !  what  will  not  one  day  be 
his  respect  and  desire  for  Greece  and  its  symmetria 
prisca,  when  the  scales  drop  from  his  eyes  as  he  walks 
the  London  streets,  and  he  sees  such  a  lesson  in  mean- 10 
ness  as  the  Strand,  for  instance,  in  its  true  deformity  ! 
But  here  we  are  coming  to  our  friend  Mr.  Ruskin's 
province,  and  I  will  not  intrude  upon  it,  for  he  is  its 
very  sufficient  guardian. 

And  so  we  at  last  find,  it  seems,  we  find  flowing  in  15 
favour  of  the  humanities  the  natural  and  necessary 
stream  of  things,  which  seemed  against  them  when  we 
started.  The  "  hairy  quadruped  furnished  with  a  tail 
and  pointed  ears,  probably  arboreal  in  his  habits," 
this  good  fellow  carried  hidden  in  his  nature,  appar-  20 
ently,  something  destined  to  develop  into  a  necessity 
for  humane  letters.  Nay,  more  ;  we  seem  finally  to 
be  even  led  to  the  further  conclusion  that  our  hairy 
ancestor  carried  in  his  nature,  also,  a  necessity  for 
Greek.  25 

And  therefore,  to  say  the  truth,  I  cannot  really 
think  that  humane  letters  are  in  much  actual  danger 
of  being  thrust  out  from  their  leading  place  in  educa- 
tion, in  spite  of  the  array  of  authorities  against  them 
at  this  moment.  So  long  as  human  nature  is  what  it  30 
is,  their  attractions  will  remain  irresistible.  As  with 
Greek,  so  with  letters  generally :  they  will  some  day 


LITERATURE   AND   SCIENCE.  131 

come,  we  may  hope,  to  be  studied  more  rationally, 
but  they  will  not  lose  their  place.  What  will  happen 
will  rather  be  that  there  will  be  crowded  into  educa- 
tion other  matters  besides,  far  too  many  ;  there  will 
5  be,  perhaps,  a  period  of  unsettlement  and  confusion 
and  false  tendency;  but  letters  will  not  in  the  end  lose 
their  leading  place.  If  they  lose  it  for  a  time,  they 
will  get  it  back  again.  We  shall  be  brought  back  to 
them    by    our   wants   and    aspirations.     And  a   poor 

10  humanist  may  possess  his  soul  in  patience,  neither 
strive  nor  cry,  admit  the  energy  and  brilliancy  of  the 
partisans  of  physical  science,  and  their  present  favour 
with  the  public,  to  be  far  greater  than  his  own,  and 
still  have  a  happy  faith  that  the  nature  of  things  works 

15  silently  on  behalf  of  the  studies  which  he  loves,  and 
that,  while  we  shall  all  have  to  acquaint  ourselves  with 
the  great  results  reached  by  modern  science,  and  to 
give  ourselves  as  much  training  in  its  disciplines  as  we 
can  conveniently  carry,  yet  the  majority  of  men  will 

20  always  require  humane  letters;  and  so  much  the  more, 
as  they  have  the  more  and  the  greater  results  of  science 
tojelate  to  the  need  in  man  fnr„rjaniiu£JT-ajuJ--^»-4-hp 
need  in  him  for  beauty. — Discourses  in  America,  ed. 
1896,  pp.  72-137. 


(ro+J-'  ■ 


©iforD  anfc  pbilfsttnfem. 

Several  of  the  Essays  which  are  here  collected  and 
reprinted  had  the  good  or  the  bad  fortune  to  be  much 
criticised  at  the  time  of  their  first  appearance.  I  am 
not  now  going  to  inflict  upon  the  reader  a  reply  to 
those  criticisms;  for  one  or  two  explanations  which  are  5 
desirable,  I  shall  elsewhere,  perhaps,  be  able  some  day 
to  find  an  opportunity  ;  but,  indeed,  it  is  not  in  my 
nature, — some  of  my  critics  would  rather  say,  not  in 
my  power, — to  dispute  on  behalf  of  any  opinion,  even 
my  own,  very  obstinately.  To  try  and  approach  truth  10 
on  one  side  after  another,  not  to  strive  or  cry,  nor  to 
persist  in  pressing  forward,  on  any  one  side,  with  vio- 
lence and  self-will, — it  is  only  thus,  it  seems  to  me, 
that  mortals  may  hope  to  gain  any  vision  of  the  mys- 
terious Goddess,  whom  we  shall  never  see  except  in  15 
outline,  but  only  thus  even  in  outline.  He  who  will 
do  nothing  but  fight  impetuously  towards  her  on  his 
own,  one,  favourite,  particular  line,  is  inevitably  des- 
tined to  run  his  head  into  the  folds  of  the  black  robe 
in  which  she  is  wrapped.  20 

So  it  is  not  to  reply  to  my  critics  that  I  write  this 
preface,  but  to  prevent  a  misunderstanding,  of  which 
certain  phrases  that  some  of  them  use  make  me  appre- 
hensive. Mr.  Wright,  one  of  the  many  translators  of 
Homer,  has  published  a  letter  to  the  Dean  of  Canter-  25 
bury,  complaining  of  some  remarks  of  mine,  uttered 

132 


OXFORD  AND   PHILISTINISM.  133 

now  a  long  while  ago,  on  his  version  of  the  Iliad. 
One  cannot  be  always  studying  one's  own  works,  and 
I  was  really  under  the  impression,  till  I  saw  Mr. 
Wright's  complaint,  that  I  had  spoken  of  him  with  all 

5  respect.  The  reader  may  judge  of  my  astonishment, 
therefore,  at  finding,  from  Mr.  Wright's  pamphlet,  that 
I  had  "  declared  with  much  solemnity  that  there  is 
not  any  proper  reason  for  his  existing."  That  I  never 
said;  but,  on   looking  back  at  my  Lectures  on  trans- 

iolating  Homer,  I  find  that  I  did  say,  not  that  Mr. 
Wright,  but  that  Mr.  Wright's  version  of  the  Iliad, 
repeating  in  the  main  the  merits  and  defects  of 
Cowper's  version,  as  Mr.  Sotheby's  repeated  those  of 
Pope's  version,  had,  if  I  might  be  pardoned  for  saying 

15  so,  no  proper  reason  for  existing.  Elsewhere  I  ex- 
pressly spoke  of  the  merit  of  his  version;  but  I  confess 
that  the  phrase,  qualified  as  I  have  shown,  about  its 
want  of  a  proper  reason  for  existing,  I  used.  Well, 
the  phrase  had,  perhaps,  too  much  vivacity  ;   we  have 

20  all  of  us  a  right  to  exist,  we  and  our  works;  an 
unpopular  author  should  be  the  last  person  to  call  in 
question  this  right.  So  I  gladly  withdraw  the  offend- 
ing phrase,  and  I  am  sorry  for  having  used  it ;  Mr. 
Wright,  however,  would  perhaps  be  more  indulgent  to 

25  my  vivacity,  if  he  considered  that  we  are  none  of  us 
likely  to  be  lively  much  longer.  My  vivacity  is  but 
the  last  sparkle  of  flame  before  we  are  all  in  the  dark, 
the  last  glimpse  of  colour  before  we  all  go  into 
drab, — the    drab    of    the   earnest,    prosaic,    practical, 

30  austerely  literal  future.  Yes,  the  world  will  soon  be 
the  Philistines  !  and  then,  with  every  voice,  not  of 
thunder,   silenced,    and    the    whole    earth    filled   and 


134  OXFORD  AND   PHILISTINISM. 

ennobled  every  morning  by  the  magnificent  roaring 
of  the  young  lions  of  the  Daily  Telegraph,  we  shall  all 
yawn  in  one  another's  faces  with  the  dismallest,  the 
most  unimpeachable  gravity. 

But  I  return  to  my  design  in  writing  this  Preface.  5 
That  design  was,  after  apologising  to  Mr.  Wright  for 
my  vivacity  of  five  years  ago,  to  beg  him  and  others 
to  let  me  bear  my  own  burdens,  without  saddling  the 
great    and    famous    University    tc    which  I  have  the 
honour  to  belong  with  any  portion  of  them.     What  ic 
I  mean  to  deprecate  is  such  phrases   as,  "  his  pro- 
fessorial assault,"  "  his  assertions  issued  ex  cathedra" 
"  the  sanction  of  his  name   as  the  representative  of 
poetry,"  and  so  on.     Proud  as  I  am  of  my  connection 
with  the  University  of  Oxford,1  I  can  truly  say,  that  15 
knowing  how   unpopular  a   task  one  is  undertaking 
when  one  tries  to  pull  out  a  few  more  stops  in  that 
powerful    but     at    present     somewhat     narrow-toned 
organ,  the  modern  Englishman,  I  have  always  sought 
to  stand   by   myself,    and    to    compromise    others    as  20 
little  as  possible.     Besides  this,  my   native   modesty 
is  such,  that  I  have  always  been  shy  of  assuming  the 
honourable  style  of  Professor,  because  this  is  a  title 
I  share  with   so  many  distinguished  men — Professor 
Pepper,   Professor   Anderson,    Professor   Frickel,  and  25 
others — who  adorn  it,  I  feel,  much  more  than  I  do. 

However,  it  is  not  merely  out  of  modesty  that  I 
prefer  to  stand  alone,  and  to  concentrate  on  myself, 
as  a  plain  citizen  of  the  republic  of  letters,  and  not 
as  an  office-bearer  in  a  hierarchy,  the  whole  responsi-  30 

1  When  the  above  was  written  the  author  had  still  the  Chair  of 
Poetry  at  Oxford,  which  he  has  since  vacated. 


OXFORD  AND  PHILISTINISM.  135 

bility  for  all  I  write  ;  it  is  much  more  out  of  genuine 
devotion  to  the  University  of  Oxford,  for  which  I 
feel,  and  always  must  feel,  the  fondest,  the  most 
reverential  attachment.  In  an  epoch  of  dissolution 
5  and  transformation,  such  as  that  on  which  we  are 
now  entered,  habits,  ties,  and  associations  are  inevit- 
ably broken  up,  the  action  of  individuals  becomes 
more  distinct,  the  shortcomings,  errors,  heats,  dis- 
putes, which  necessarily  attend  individual  action,  are 

10 brought   into   greater   prominence.     Who  would  not 

gladly  keep  clear,  from   all   these  passing  clouds,  an 

august  institution  which  was  there  before  they  arose, 

and  which  will  be  there  when  they  have  blown  over  ? 

It  is  true,  the  Saturday  Revietv   maintains  that  our 

15  epoch  of  transformation  is  finished  ;  that  we  have 
found  our  philosophy  ;  that  the  British  nation  has 
searched  all  anchorages  for  the  spirit,  and  has  finally 
anchored  itself,  in  the  fulness  of  perfected  knowledge, 
on    Benthamism.     This  idea  at  first  made  a  great  im- 

20  pression  on  me;  not  only  because  it  is  so  consoling  in  it- 
self, but  also  because  it  explained  a  phenomenon  which 
in  the  summer  of  last  year  had,  I  confess,  a  good 
deal  troubled  me.  At  that  time  my  avocations  led 
me  to  travel  almost  daily  on  one  of  the  Great  Eastern 

25  lines, — the  Woodford  Branch.  Every  one  knows 
that  the  murderer,  Miiller,  perpetrated  his  detestable 
act  on  the  North  London  Railway,  close  by.  The 
English  middle  class,  of  which  I  am  myself  a  feeble 
unit,  travel  on  the  Woodford  Branch  in  large  numbers. 

30  Well,  the  demoralisation  of  our  class, — the  class  which 
(the  newspapers  are  constantly  saying  it,  so  I  may 
repeat  it  without  vanity)  has  done  all  the  great  things 


f3°  OXFORD  'AND   PHILISTINISM. 

which  have  ever  been  done  in  England, —  the  demoral- 
isation, I  say,  of  our  class,  caused  by  the  Bow  tragedy, 
was  something  bewildering.  Myself  a  transcenden- 
talist  (as  the  Saturday  Review  knows),  I  escaped  the 
infection;  and,  day  after  day,  I  used  to  ply  my  5 
agitated  fellow-travellers  with  all  the  consolations 
which  my  transcendentalism  would  naturally  suggest 
to  me.  I  reminded  them  how  Cassar  refused  to  take 
precautions  against  assassination,  because  life  was  not 
worth  having  at  the  price  of  an  ignoble  solicitude  for  10 
it.  I  reminded  them  what  insignificant  atoms  we  all 
are  in  the  life  of  the  world.  "  Suppose  the  worst  to 
happen,"  I  said,  addressing  a  portly  jeweller  from 
Cheapside  ;  "  suppose  even  yourself  to  be  the  victim  ; 
il  ny  a  pas  d'homme  ne'cessaire.  We  should  miss  you  15 
for  a  day  or  two  upon  the  Woodford  Branch  ;  but 
the  great  mundane  movement  would  still  go  on,  the 
gravel  walks  of  your  villa  would  still  be  rolled, 
dividends  would  still  be  paid  at  the  Bank,  omnibuses 
would  still  run,  there  would  still  be  the  old  crush  at  20 
the  corner  of  Fenchurch  Street."  All  was  of  no 
avail.  Nothing  could  moderate,  in  the  bosom  of  the 
great  English  middle-class,  their  passionate,  absorb- 
ing, almost  blood-thirsty  clinging  to  life.  At  the 
moment  I  thought  this  over-concern  a  little  un-  25 
worthy  ;  but  the  Saturday  Review  suggests  a  touching 
explanation  of  it.  What  I  took  for  the  ignoble  cling- 
ing to  life  of  a  comfortable  worldling,  was,  perhaps, 
only  the  ardent  longing  of  a  faithful  Benthamite, 
traversing  an  age  still  dimmed  by  the  last  mists  of  30 
transcendentalism,  to  be  spared  long  enough  to  see 
his  religion  in  the  full  and  final  blaze  of  its  triumph. 


OXFORD  AND   PHILISTINISM.  J 37 

This  respectable  man,  whom  I  imagined  to  be  going 
up  to  London  to  serve  his  shop,  or  to  buy  shares,  or 
to  attend  an  Exeter  Hall  meeting,  or  to  assist  at  the 
deliberations    of   the  Marylebone   Vestry,  was    even, 

5  perhaps,  in  real  truth,  on  a  pious  pilgrimage,  to  obtain 
from  Mr.  Bentham's  executors  a  secret  bone  of  his 
great  dissected  master. 

And   yet,  after    all,  I    cannot    but    think    that  the 
Saturday  Review  has  here,  for  once,  fallen  a  victim  to 

ioan  idea, — a  beautiful  but  deluding  idea, — and  that 
the  British  nation  has  not  yet,  so  entirely  as  the 
reviewer  seems  to  imagine,  found  the  last  word  of  its 
philosophy.  No,  we  are  all  seekers  still  !  seekers 
often  make  mistakes,  and  I  wish  mine  to  redound  to 

15  my  own  discredit  only,  and  not  to  touch  Oxford. 
Beautiful  city  !  so  venerable,  so  lovely,  so  unravaged 
by    the    fierce    intellectual    life   of    our    century,    so 


serene  ! 


"  There  are  our  young  barbarians,  all  at  play!" 

20  And  yet,  steeped  in  sentiment  as  she  lies,  spreading 
her  gardens  to  the  moonlight,  and  whispering  from 
her  towers  the  last  enchantments  of  the  Middle  Age, 
who  will  deny  that  Oxford,  by  her  ineffable  charm, 
keeps  ever  calling  us  nearer  to  the  true  goal  of  all  of 

25  us,  to  the  ideal,  to  perfection, — to  beauty,  in  a  word, 
which  is  only  truth  seen  from  another  side  ? — nearer, 
perhaps,  than  all  the  science  of  Tubingen.  Adorable 
dreamer,  whose  heart  has  been  so  romantic  !  who  hast 
given  thyself  so  prodigally,  given  thyself  to  sides  and 

30  to  heroes  not  mine,  only  never  to  the  Philistines  J 
home  of  lost  causes,   and  forsaken   beliefs,  and  un- 


138  OXFORD  AND  PHILISTINISM. 

popular  names,  and  impossible  loyalties  !  what  ex- 
ample could  ever  so  inspire  us  to  keep  down  the 
Philistine  in  ourselves,  what  teacher  could  ever  so 
save  us  from  that  bondage  to  which  we  are  all  prone, 
that  bondage  which  Goethe,  in  his  incomparable  lines  5 
on  the  death  of  Schiller,  makes  it  his  friend's  highest 
praise  (and  nobly  did  Schiller  deserve  the  praise)  to 
have  left  miles  out  of  sight  behind  him  ;  the  bond- 
age of  "was  uns  alle  bdndigt,  das  gemeine  !  "  She  will 
forgive  me,  even  if  I  have  unwittingly  drawn  upon  10 
her  a  shot  or  two  aimed  at  her  unworthy  son  ;  for  she 
is  generous,  and  the  cause  in  which  I  fight  is,  after  all, 
hers.  Apparitions  of  a  day,  what  is  our  puny  warfare 
against  the  Philistines,  compared  with  the  warfare 
which  this  queen  of  romance  has  been  waging  against  15 
them  for  centuries,  and  will  wage  after  we  are  gone  ? 
— Essays  in  Criticism,  First  Series,  ed.  1896,  Preface. 


Ipbilistinfsm. 

//  Philistinism ! — we    have     not    the    expression    in 

f  English.  Perhaps  we  have  not  the  word  because  we  // 
have  so  much  of  the  thing.  At  Soli,  I  imagine,  they 
did  not  talk  of  solecisms  ;  and  here,  at  the  very  head- 
5  quarters  of  Goliath,  nobody  talks  of  Philistinism. 
The  French  have  adopted  the  term  ipicier  (grocer), 
to  designate  the  sort  of  being  whom  the  Germans 
designate  by  the  term  Philistine  ;  but  the  French 
term, — besides  that  it  casts  a  slur  upon  a  respectable 

10  class,  composed  of  living  and  susceptible  members, 
while  the  original  Philistines  are  dead  and  buried 
long  ago, — is  really,  I  think,  in  itself  much  less  apt 
and  expressive  than  the  German  term.  Efforts  have 
been  made  to  obtain  in  English  some  term  equivalent 

15  to  Philister  or  e'picier ;  Mr.  Carlyle  has  made  several 
such  efforts  :  "  respectability  with  its  thousand  gigs," 
he  says  ; — well,  the  occupant  of  every  one  of  these 
gigs  is,  Mr.  Carlyle  means,  a  Philistine.  However,  the 
word  respectable  is  far  too  valuable  a  word  to  be  thus 

20  perverted  from  its  proper  meaning  ;  if  the  English  are 
ever  to  have  a  word  for  the  thing  we  are  speaking  of, — 
and  so  prodigious  are  the  changes  which  the  modern 
spirit  is  introducing,  that  even  we  English  shall  per- 
haps one  day  come  to  want  such  a  word, — I  think  we 

25  had  much  better  take  the  term  Philistine  itself.  / 

Philistine  must  have  originally  meant,  in  the  mind 

139 


1 4°  PHIL  IS  TIN  ISM. 

of  those  who  invented  the  nickname,  a  strong,  dogged, 
unenlightened  opponent  of  the  chosen  people,  of  the 
children  of  the  light.  The  party  of  change,  the 
would-be  remodellers  of  the  old  traditional  European 
order,  the  invokers  of  reason  against  custom,  the  5 
representatives  of  the  modern  spirit  in  every  sphere 
where  it  is  applicable,  regarded  themselves,  with  the 
robust  self  confidence  natural  to  reformers  as  a  chosen 
people,  as  children  of  the  light.  They  regarded  their 
adversaries  as  humdrum  people,  slaves  to  routine,  10 
enemies  to  light  ;  stupid  and  oppressive,  but  at  the 
same  time  very  strong.  This  explains  the  love  which 
Heine,  that  Paladin  of  the  modern  spirit,  has  for 
France  ;  it  explains  the  preference  which  he  gives  to 
France  over  Germany  :  "  the  French,"  he  says,  "  are  15 
the  chosen  people  of  the  new  religion,  its  first  gospels 
and  dogmas  have  been  drawn  up  in  their  language  ; 
Paris  is  the  new  Jerusalem,  and  the  Rhine  is  the 
Jordan  which  divides  the  consecrated  land  of  free- 
dom from  the  land  of  the  Philistines."  He  means  so 
that  the  French,  as  a  people,  have  shown  more  accessi- 
bility to  ideas  than  any  other  people  ;  that  prescrip- 
tion and  routine  have  had  less  hold  upon  them  than 
upon  any  other  people  ;  that  they  have  shown  most 
readiness  to  move  and  to  alter  at  the  bidding  (real  or  25 
supposed)  of  reason.  This  explains,  too,  the  detesta- 
tion which  Heine  had  for  the  English  :  "  I  might 
settle  in  England,"  he  says,  in  his  exile,  "if  it  were 
not  that  I  should  find  there  two  things,  coal-smoke 
and  Englishmen  ;  I  cannot  abide  either."  What  he  3c 
hated  in  the  English  was  the  "  achtbrittische  Be- 
schranktheit,"  as  he  calls  it, — the  genuine  British  ?iar- 


PHILISTINISM.  141 

rowness.  In  truth,  thj English,  profoundly  as  they  have 
modified  the  old  Middle-Age  order,  great  as  is  the 
liberty  which  they  have  secured  for  themselves,  have 
in  all  their  changes  proceeded,  to  use  a  familiar 
5  expression,  by  the  rule  of  thumb  ;  what  was  intolera- 
bly inconvenient  to  them  they  have  suppressed,  and  as 
they  have  suppressed  it,  not  because  it  was  irrational, 
but  because  it  was  practically  inconvenient,  they  have 
seldom    in    suppressing    it    appealed    to    reason,    but 

10  always,  if  possible,  to  some  precedent,  or  form,  or 
letter,  which  served  as  a  convenient  instrument  for 
their  purpose,  and  which  saved  them  from  the  neces- 
sity of  recurring  to  general  principles.  They  have 
thus   become,   in    a  certain  sense,   of  all   people   the 

15  most  inaccessible  to  ideas  and  the  most  impatient  of 
them  ;  inaccessible  to  them,  because  of  their  want  of 
familiarity  with  them  ;  and  impatient  of  them  because 
they  have  got  on  so  well  without  them,  that  they 
despise    those    who,  not    having    got  on   as    well    as 

20  themselves,  still  make  a  fuss  for  what  they  themselves 
have  done  so  well  without.  But  there  has  certainly 
followed  from  hence,  in  this  country,  somewhat  of  a 
general  depression  of  pure  intelligence  :  Philistia  has 
come  to  be  thought  by  us  the  true  Land  of  Promise, 

25  and  it  is  anything  but  that  ;  the  born  lover  of  ideas, 
the  born  hater  of  commonplaces,  must  feel  in  this 
country,  that  the  sky  over  his  head  is  of  brass  and 
iron.  The  enthusiast  for  the  idea,  for  reason,  values 
reason,  the   idea,  in    and  for  themselves  ;  he  values 

30  them,  irrespectively  of  the  practical  conveniences 
which  their  triumph  may  obtain  for  him  ;  and  the 
man   who  regards   the  possession   of   these   practical 


142  PHILISTINISM. 

conveniences  as  something  sufficient  in  itself,  some- 
thing which  compensates  for  the  absence  or  surrender 
of  the  idea,  of  reason,  is,  in  his  eyes,  a  Philistine. 
This  is  why  Heine  so  often  and  so  mercilessly  attacks 
the  liberals  ;  much  as  he  hates  conservatism  he  hates  5 
Philistinism  even  more,  and  whoever  attacks  conser- 
vatism itself  ignobly,  not  as  a  child  of  light,  not  in 
the  name  of  the  idea,  is  a  Philistine.  Our  Cobbett  is 
thus  for  him,  much  as  he  disliked  our  clergy  and 
aristocracy  whom  Cobbett  attacked,  a  Philistine  with  10 
six  fingers  on  every  hand  and  on  every  foot  six  toes, 
four-and-twenty  in  number  :  a  Philistine,  the  staff  of 
whose  spear  is  like  a  weaver's  beam.  Thus  he  speaks 
of  him  : — 

"  While  I  translate  Cobbett's  words,  the  man  him- 15 
self  comes  bodily  before  my  mind's  eye,  as  I  saw  him 
at  that  uproarious  dinner  at   the  Crown   and  Anchor 
Tavern,  with   his    scolding   red  face   and   his   radical 
laugh,  in  which  venomous  hate  mingles  with  a  mock- 
ing exultation   at     his    enemies'    surely    approaching  20 
downfall.     He  is  a  chained  cur,  who  falls  with  equal 
fury  on    every  one  whom   he   does  not  know,  often 
bites  the  best  friend  of  the  house  in  his  calves,  barks 
incessantly,  and  just  because  of  this  incessantness  of 
his  barking  cannot  get  listened  to,  even  when  he  barks  25 
at  a  real  thief.     Therefore  the  distinguished   thieves 
who   plunder  England  do  not   think  it  necessary  to 
throw  the  growling  Cobbett  a  bone  to  stop  his  mouth. 
This  makes  the  dog  furiously  savage,  and  he  shows 
all  his  hungry  teeth.     Poor  old  Cobbett  !     England's  30 
dog  !     I  have  no  love  for  thee,  for  every  vulgar  nature 
my  soul  abhors  ;  but  thou  touchest  me  to  the  inmost 


PHILISTINISM.  M3 

soul  with  pity,  as  I  see  how  thou  strainest  in  vain  to 
break  loose  and  to  get  at  those  thieves,  who  make 
off  with  their  booty  before  thy  very  eyes,  and  mock  at 
thy  fruitless  springs  and  thine  impotent  howling." 

5  There  is  balm  in  Philistia  as  well  as  in  Gilead.  A 
chosen  circle  of  children  of  the  modern  spirit,  per- 
fectly emancipated  from  prejudice  and  commonplace, 
regarding  the  ideal  side  of  things  in  all  its  efforts  for 
change,  passionately  despising  half-measures  and  con- 

iodescension  to  human  folly  and  obstinacy, — with  a 
bewildered,  timid,  torpid  multitude  behind, — conducts 
a  country  to  the  government  of  Herr  von  Bismarck. 
A  nation  regarding  the  practical  side  of  things  in  its 
efforts  for  change,  attacking    not   what  is  irrational, 

15  but  what  is  pressingly  inconvenient,  and  attacking 
this  as  one  body,  "  moving  altogether  if  it  move  at 
all,"  and  treating  children  of  light  like  the  very 
harshest  of  stepmothers,  comes  to  the  prosperity  and 
liberty   of  modern   England.     For  all  that,  however, 

20  Philistia  (let  me  say  it  again)  is  not  the  true  promised 
land,  as  we  English  commonly  imagine  it  to  be  ;  and 
our  excessive  neglect  of  the  idea,  and  consequent 
inaptitude  for  it,  threatens  us,  at  a  moment  when  the 
idea  is  beginning  to  exercise  a   real  power  in  human 

25  society,  with  serious  future  inconvenience,  and,  in  the 
meanwhile,  cuts  us  off  from  the  sympathy  of  other 
nations,  which  feel  its  power  more  than  we  do. — ■ 
Essays,  I.,  ed.  1896,  pp.  162-167. 


Culture  ano  Bnarcbg. 

In  one  of  his   speeches  a  short  time  ago,  that  fine 
speaker  and  famous  Liberal,  Mr.  Bright,  took  occasion 
to  have  a  fling  at  the  friends  and  preachers  of  culture. 
"People    who    talk    about    what    they  call  culture!" 
said    he,    contemptously  ;    "by    which    they    mean    a  5 
smattering  of  the  two  dead  languages  of  Greek  and 
Latin."     And  he  went  on  to  remark,  in  a  strain  with 
which   modern   speakers   and  writers   have  made   us 
very  familiar,  how  poor  a  thing  this  culture  is,  how 
little  good  it  can  do  to  the  world,  and  how  absurd  it  ia 
is  for  its  possessors  to  set  much  store  by  it.     And  the 
other  day  a  younger  Liberal  than  Mr.  Bright,  one  of 
a  school  whose  mission  it  is  to  bring  into  order  and 
system    that   body   of    truth    with  which    the    earlier 
Liberals  merely  fumbled,  a  member  of  the  University  15 
of    Oxford,   and   a  very  clever  writer,   Mr.   Frederic 
Harrison,  developed,  in  the  systematic  and  stringent 
manner  of  his  school,   the  thesis  which   Mr.   Bright 
had   propounded   in  only  general    terms.     "  Perhaps 
the  very  silliest  cant  of  the  day,"  said  Mr.   Frederic  20 
Harrison,  "is   the  cant  about  culture.     Culture  is  a 
desirable  quality  in  a  critic  of  new    books,  and  sits 
well  on  a  possessor  of  belles-lettres  ;  but  as  applied  to 
politics,  it  means  simply  a  turn  for  small  fault-finding, 
love  of  selfish  ease,  and   indecision  in  action.     The  25 
man  of  culture  is  in  politics  one  of  the  poorest  mortals 

144 


CULTURE  AND  ANARCHY.  145 

alive.     For  simple  pedantry  and  want  of  good  sense 
no  man  is  his  equal.     No  assumption  is  too  unreal 
,io  end  is  too   unpractical   for  him.     But   the  active 
exercise  of  politics  requires  common  sense,  sympathy, 

5  trust,  resolution,  and  enthusiasm,  qualities  which 
your  man  of  culture  has  carefully  rooted  up,  lest  they 
damage  the  delicacy  of  his  critical  olfactories.  Per- 
haps they  are  the  only  class  of  responsible  beings  in 
the  community  who   cannot  with  safety  be  entrusted 

io  with  power." 

Now  for  my  part  I  do  not  wish  to  see  men  of 
culture  asking  to  be  entrusted  with  power ;  and, 
indeed,  I  have  freely  said,  that  in  my  opinion  the 
speech  most  proper,  at  present,  for  a  man  of  culture 

15  to  make  to  a  body  of  his  fellow-countrymen  who  get 
him  into  a  committee-room,  is  Socrates's  :  Know  thy- 
self!  and  this  is  not  a  speech  to  be  made  by  men 
wanting  to  be  entrusted  with  power.  For  this  very 
indifference  to   direct    political  action    I    have   been 

20  taken  to  task  by  the  Daily  Telegraph,  coupled,  by  a 
strange  perversity  of  fate,  with  just  that  very  one  of 
the  Hebrew  prophets  whose  style  I  admire  the  least, 
and  called  "an  elegant  Jeremiah."  It  is  because  I 
say  (to  use  the  words  which  the  Daily  Telegraph  puts 

25  in  my  mouth)  : — "  You  mustn't  make  a  fuss  because 
you  have  no  vote, — that  is  vulgarity  ;  you  mustn't 
hold  big  meetings  to  agitate  for  reform  bills  and  to 
repeal  corn  laws, — that  is  the  very  height  of  vul- 
garity,"— it  is  for  this  reason  that  I  am  called  some- 

30  times  an  elegant  Jeremiah,  sometimes  a  spurious 
Jeremiah,  a  Jeremiah  about  the  reality  of  whose 
mission    the    writer   in    the   Daily  Telegrat>h  has   his 


146  CULTURE   AND  ANARCHY. 

doubts.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  I  have  so  taken 
my  line  as  not  to  be  exposed  to  the  whole  brunt  of 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison's  censure.  Still,  I  have  often 
spoken  in  praise  of  culture,  I  have  striven  to  make 
all  my  works  and  ways  serve  the  interests  of  culture.  5 
I  take  culture  to  be  something  a  great  deal  more  than 
what  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  and  others  call  it :  "a 
desirable  quality  in  a  critic  of  new  books."  Nay, 
even  though  to  a  certain  extent  I  am  disposed  to 
agree  with  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  that  men  of  culture  10 
are  just  the  class  of  responsible  beings  in  this  com- 
munity of  ours  who  cannot  properly,  at  present,  be 
entrusted  with  power,  I  am  not  sure  that  I  do  not 
think  this  the  fault  of  our  community  rather  than  of 
the  men  of  culture.  In  short,  although,  like  Mr.  15 
Bright  and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  and  the  editor  of 
the  Daily  Telegraph,  and  a  large  body  of  valued  friends 
of  mine,  I  am  a  Liberal,  yet  I  am  a  Liberal  tempered 
by  experience,  reflection,  and  renouncement,  and  I 
am,  above  all,  a  believer  in  culture.  Therefore  1 20 
propose  now  to  try  and  inquire,  in  the  simple  un- 
systematic way  which  best  suits  both  my  taste  and 
my  powers,  what  culture  really  is,  what  good  it  can 
do,  what  is  our  own  special  need  of  it  ;  and  I  shall 
seek  to  find  some  plain  grounds  on  which  a  faith  in  25 
culture, — both  my  own  faith  in  it  and  the  faith  of 
others, — may  rest  securely. — Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed. 
1896,  Introduction. 


£  Jv^amSUjo/^ 


7-~~£«r-H*~«L^hiL   **v  L^JsMxafa 


Sweetness^  anMLfgbt. 

The  disparagers  of  culture  make  its  motive  curi- 
osity ;  sometimes,  indeed,  they  make  its  motive  mere 
exclusiveness  and  vanity.  The  culture  which  is  sup- 
posed to  plume  itself  on  a  smattering  of  Greek  and 

5  Latin  is  a  culture  which  is  begotten  by  nothing  so 
intellectual  as  curiosity  ;  it  is  valued  either  out  of 
sheer  vanity  and  ignorance  or  else  as  an  engine  of 
social  and  class  distinction,  separating  its  holder,  like 
a  badge  or  title,  from  other  people  who  have  not  got 

10  it.  No  serious  man  would  call  this  culture  %  or  attach 
any  value  to  it,  as  culture,  at  all.  To  find  the  real 
ground  for  the  very  different  estimate  which  serious 
people  will  set  upon  culture,  we  must  find  some 
motive  for  culture  in  the  terms  of  which  may  lie  a 

15  real  ambiguity  ;  and  such  a  motive  the  word  curiosity 
gives  us. 

I  have  before  now  pointed  out  that  we  English  do 
not,  like  the  foreigners,  use  this  word  in  a  good  sense 
as  well  as  in  a  bad  sense.     With  us  the  word  is  always 

20 used  in  a  somewhat  disapproving  sense.  A  liberal 
and  intelligent  eagerness  about  the  things  of  the  mind 
may  be  meant  by  a  foreigner  when  he  speaks  of 
curiosity,  but  with  us  the  word  always  conveys  a  cer- 
tain notion  of  frivolous  and  unedifying  activity.     In 

25  the  Quarterly  Review,  some  little  time  ago,  was  an 
estimate  of  the  celebrated   French  critic,  M.  Sainte« 


I43  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

Beuve,  and  a  very  inadequate  estimate  it  in  my  judg- 
ment was.  And  its  inadequacy  consisted  chiefly  in 
this  :  that  in  our  English  way  it  left  out  of  sight  the 
double  sense  really  involved  in  the  word  curiosity, 
thinking  enough  was  said  to  stamp  M.  Sainte-Beuve  5 
with  blame  if  it  was  said  that  he  was  impelled  in  his 
operations  as  a  critic  by  curiosity,  and  omitting  either 
to  perceive  that  M.  Sainte-Beuve  himself,  and  many 
other  people  with  him,  would  consider  that  this  was 
praiseworthy  and  not  blameworthy,  or  to  point  out  10 
why  it  ought  really  to  be  accounted  worthy  of  blame 
and  not  of  praise.  For  as  there  is  a  curiosity  about 
intellectual  matters  which  is  futile,  and  merely  a 
disease,  so  there  is  certainly  a  curiosity, — a  desire 
after  the  things  of  the  mind  simply  for  their  own  15 
sakes  and  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them  as  they 
are, — which  is,  in  an  intelligent  being,  natural  and 
laudable.  Nay,  and  the  very  desire  to  see  things  as 
they  are  implies  a  balance  and  regulation  of  mind 
which  is  not  often  attained  without  fruitful  effort,  and  20 
which  is  the  very  opposite  of  the  blind  and  diseased 
impulse  of  mind  which  is  what  we  mean  to  blame 
when  we  blame  curiosity.  Montesquieu  says  :  "  The 
first  motive  which  ought  to  impel  us  to  study  is  the 
desire  to  augment  the  excellence  of  our  nature,  and  to  25 
render  an  intelligent  being  yet  more  intelligent." 
This  is  the  true  ground  to  assign  for  the  genuine 
scientific  passion,  however  manifested,  and  for  culture, 
viewed  simply  as  a  fruit  of  this  passion  ;  and  it  is  a 
worthy  ground,  even  though  we  let  the  term  curiosity  30 
stand  to  describe  it. 

But  there  is  of  culture  another  view,  in  which  not 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  1 49 

solely  the  scientific  passion,  the  sheer  desire  to  see 
things  as  they  are,  natural  and  proper  in  an  intelligent 
being,  appears  as  the  ground  of  it.  There  is  a  view 
in  which  all  the  love  of  our  neighbour,  the  impulses 
"  towards  action,  help,  and  beneficence,  the  desire  for 
removing  human  error,  clearing  human  confusion,  and 
diminishing  human  misery,  the  noble  aspiration  to 
leave  the  world  better  and  happier  than  we  found  it, — 
motives  eminently  such  as  are  called  social, — come  in 

ioas  part  of  the  grounds  of  culture,  and  the  main  and 
pre-eminent  part.  Culture  is  then  properly  described 
not  as  having  its  origin  in  curiosity,  but  as  having  its 
origin  in  the  love  of  perfection  ;  it  is  a  study  of  per- 
fection.    It  moves  by  the  force,  not  merely  or  primarily 

15  of  the  scientific  passion  for  pure  knowledge,  but  also 
of  the  moral  and  social  passion  for  doing  good.  As, 
in  the  first  view  of  it,  we  took  for  its  worthy  motto 
Montesquieu's  words :  "  To  render  an  intelligent 
being  yet  more  intelligent  !  "  so,  in  the  second  view 

20  of  it,  there  is  no  better  motto  which  it  can  have  than 
these  words  of  Bishop  Wilson  :  "  To  make  reason  and 
the  will  of  God  prevail !  " 

Only,  whereas  the  passion  for  doing  good  is  apt  .0 
be  overhasty  in  determining  what  reason  and  the  will 

25  of  God  say,  because  its  turn  is  for  acting  rather  than 
thinking  and  it  wants  to  be  beginning  to  act  ;  and 
whereas  it  is  apt  to  take  its  own  conceptions,  which 
proceed  from  its  own  state  of  development  and  share 
in  all  the  imperfections  and  immaturities  of  this,  for  a 

30 basis  of  action  ;  what  distinguishes  culture  is,  that  it 
is  possessed  by  the  scientific  passion  as  well  as  by 
the  passion  of  doing  good  ;  that  it  demands  worthy 


150  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

notions  of  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  and  does  not 
readily  suffer  its  own  crude  conceptions  to  substitute 
themselves  for  them.  And  knowing  that  no  action  or 
institution  can  be  salutary  and  stable  which  is  not 
based  on  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  it  is  not  so  bent  5 
on  acting  and  instituting,  ev&n  with  the  great  aim  of 
diminishing  human  error  and  misery  ever  before  its 
thoughts,  but  that  it  can  remember  that  acting  and 
instituting  are  of  little  use,  unless  we  know  how  and 
what  we  ought  to  act  and  to  institute.  10 

This  culture  is  more  interesting  and  more  far-reach- 
ing than  that  other,  which  is  founded  solely  on  the 
scientific  passion  for  knowing.  But  it  needs  times  of 
faith  and  ardour,  times  when  the  intellectual  horizon 
is  opening  and  widening  all  round  us,  to  flourish  in.  15 
And  is  not  the  close  and  bounded  intellectual  horizon 
within  which  we  have  long  lived  and  moved  now  lift- 
ing up,  and  are  not  new  lights  finding  free  passage  to 
shine  in  upon  us  ?  For  a  long  time  there  was  no 
passage  for  them  to  make  their  way  in  upon  us,  and  20 
then  it  was  of  no  use  to  think  of  adapting  the  world's 
action  to  them.  Where  was  the  hope  of  making 
reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail  among  people  who 
had  a  routine  which  they  had  christened  reason  and 
the  will  of  God,  in  which  they  were  inextricably  25 
bound,  and  beyond  which  they  had  no  power  of 
looking  ?  But  now  the  iron  force  of  adhesion  to  the 
old  routine, — social,  political,  religious, — has  wonder- 
fully yielded  ;  the  iron  force  of  exclusion  of  all  which 
is  new  has  wonderfully  yielded.  The  danger  now  is,  3a 
not  that  people  should  obstinately  refuse  to  allow 
anything  but  their  old  routine  to  pass  for  reason  and 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  15 ' 

the  will  of  God,  but  either  that  they  should  allow  some 
novelty  or  other  to  pass  for  these  too  easily,  or  else 
that  they  should  underrate  the  importance  of  them 
altogether,  and  think  it  enough  to  follow  action  for  its 
5  own  sake,  without  troubling  themselves  to  make  reason 
and  the  will  of  God  prevail  therein.  Now,  then,  is 
the  moment  for  culture  to  be  of  service,  culture  which 
believes  in  making  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail, 
believes  in  perfection,  is  the  study  and  pursuit  of  per- 

iofection,  and  is  no  longer  debarred,  by  a  rigid  invinci- 
ble exclusion  of  whatever  is  new,  from  getting 
acceptance  for  its  ideas,  simply  because  they  are 
new. 

The  moment    this  view  of   culture    is  seized,   the 

15  moment  it  is  regarded  not  solely  as  the  endeavour  to 
see  things  as  they  are,  to  draw  towards  a  knowledge 
of  the  universal  order  which  seems  to  be  intended  and 
aimed  at  in  the  world,  and  which  it  is  a  man's  happi- 
ness to  go  along  with   or  his  misery  to   go  counter 

20  to, — to  learn,  in  short,  the  will  of  God, — the  moment, 
I  say,  culture  is  considered  not  merely  as  the  endeavour 
to  see  and  learn  this,  but  as  the  endeavour,  also,  to 
make  it  prevail,  the  moral,  social,  and  beneficent  char- 
acter   of    culture     becomes     manifest.      The    mere 

25  endeavour  to  see  and  learn  the  truth  for  our  own 
personal  satisfaction  is  indeed  a  commencement  for 
making  it  prevail,  a  preparing  the  way  for  this,  which 
always  serves  this,  and  is  wrongly,  therefore,  stamped 
with  blame   absolutely  in  itself  and   not  only  in   its 

30  caricature  and  degeneration.  But  perhaps  it  has  got 
stamped  with  blame,  and  disparaged  with  the  dubious 
title  of  curiosity,  because  in    comparison    with  this 


152  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

wider  endeavour  of  such   great    and  plain   utility  it 
looks  selfish,  petty,  and  unprofitable. 

And  religion,  the  greatest  and   most   important   of 
the  efforts  by  which  the  human  race  has  manifested 
its  impulse  to  perfect  itself, — religion,  that  voice  of  5 
the  deepest  human  experience, — does  not  only  enjoin 
and  sanction  the  aim  which  is  the  great  aim  of  cul- 
ture, the   aim  of  setting  ourselves  to   ascertain   what 
perfection   is   and   to   make   it   prevail  ;    but  also,   in 
determining  generally  in  what  human  perfection  con- 10 
sists,   religion  comes   to   a  conclusion  identical   with 
that  which  culture, — culture  seeking  the  determination 
of  this  question  through  all  the  voices  of  human  ex- 
perience  which    have     been    heard    upon    it,    of   art, 
science,   poetry,   philosophy,  history,   as    well    as    of  is 
religion,  in   order  to  give   a  greater  fulness  and  cer- 
tainty   to  its  solution, — likewise     reaches.       Religion 
says  :    The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you  ;  and  culture, 
in  like  manner,  places  human  perfection  in  an  internal 
condition,   in   the  growth  and  predominance  of  our  2c 
humanity  proper,  as  distinguished  from  our  animality. 
It  places  it  in  the  ever-increasing  efficacy  and  in  the 
general  harmonious  expansion  of  those  gifts  of  thought 
and  feeling,  which  make  the  peculiar  dignity,  wealth, 
and  happiness  of  human  nature.     As  I  have  said  on  a  25 
former  occasion  :  "It  is  in  making  endless  additions 
to  itself,  in   the  endless   expansion  of  its   powers,  in 
endless  growth  in  wisdom  and  beauty,  that  the  spirit 
of  the  human  race  finds  its  ideal.     To  reach  this  ideal, 
culture  is  an  indispensable  aid,  and  that   is  the   true  30 
value  of  culture."     Not  a  having  and  a  resting,  but  a 
growing  and  a  becoming,  is  the  character  of  perfection 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  153 

as    culture   conceives   it ;  and  here,  too,  it  coincides 
with  religion. 

And  because  men  are  all  members  of  one  great 
whole,  and  the  sympathy  which  is  in  human  nature 
5  will  not  allow  one  member  to  be  indifferent  to  the 
rest  or  to  have  a  perfect  welfare  independent  of  the 
rest,  the  expansion  of  our  humanity,  to  suit  the  idea 
of  perfection  which  culture  forms,  must  be  a  general 
expansion.     Perfection,  as  culture  conceives  it,  is  not 

10  possible  while  the  individual  remains  isolated.  The 
individual  is  required,  under  pain  of  being  stunted 
and  enfeebled  in  his  own  development  if  he  disobeys, 
to  carry  others  along  with  him  in  his  march  towards 
perfection,    to   be   continually   doing    all    he    can   to 

15  enlarge  and  increase  the  volume  of  the  human  stream 
sweeping  thitherward.  And  here,  once  more,  culture 
lays  on  us  the  same  obligation  as  religion,  which  says, 
as  Bishop  Wilson  has  admirably  put  it,  that  "  to  pro- 
mote the  kingdom  of  God  is  to  increase  and  hasten 

20 one's  own  happiness." 

But,  finally,  perfection, — as  culture  from  a  thorough 
disinterested  study  of  human  nature  and  human  expe- 
rience learns  to  conceive  it, — is  a  harmonious  expan- 
sion of  all  the   powers  which  make   the  beauty  and 

25  worth  of  human  nature,  and  is  not  consistent  with  the 
over-development  of  any  one  power  at  the  expense  of 
the  rest.  Here  culture  goes  beyond  religion,  as 
religion  is  generally  conceived  by  us. 

If  culture,  then,  is  a  study  of  perfection,  and  of 

30  harmonious  perfection,  general  perfection,  and  per- 
fection which  consists  in  becoming  something  rather 
than  in  having  something,  in  an  inward  condition  of 


154  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

the  mind  and  spirit,  not  in  an  outward  set  of  circum- 
stances,— it  is  clear  that  culture,  instead  of  being  the 
frivolous  and  useless  thing  which  Mr.  Bright,  and  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  and  many  other  Liberals  are  apt 
to  call  it,  has  a  very  important  function  to  fulfil  for  5 
mankind.  And  this  function  is  particularly  important 
in  our  modern  world,  of  which  the  whole  civilisation 
is,  to  a  much  greater  degree  than  the  civilisation  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  mechanical  and  external,  and  tends 
constantly  to  become  more  so.  But  above  all  in  our  10 
own  country  has  culture  a  weighty  part  to  perform, 
because  here  that  mechanical  character,  which  civil- 
isation tends  to  take  everywhere,  is  shown  in  the  most 
eminent  degree.  Indeed  nearly  all  the  characters  of 
perfection,  as  culture  teaches  us  to  fix  them,  meet  in  15 
this  country  with  some  powerful  tendency  which 
thwarts  them  and  sets  them  at  defiance.  The  idea  of 
perfection  as  an  inward  condition  of  the  mind  and 
spirit  is  at  variance  with  the  mechanical  and  material 
civilisation  in  esteem  with  us,  and  nowhere,  as  I  have  20 
said,  so  much  in  esteem  as  with  us.  The  idea  of  per- 
fection as  a  general  expansion  of  the  human  family  is 
at  variance  with  our  strong  individualism,  our  hatred 
of  all  limits  to  the  unrestrained  swing  of  the  indi- 
vidual's personality,  our  maxim  of  "every  man  for 25 
himself."  Above  all,  the  idea  of  perfection  as  a  har- 
monious expansion  of  human  nature  is  at  variance 
with  our  want  of  flexibility,  with  our  inaptitude  for 
seeing  more  than  one  side  of  a  thing,  with  our  intense 
energetic  absorption  in  the  particular  pursuit  we  30 
happen  to  be  following.  So  culture  has  a  rough  task 
to  achieve  in  this  country.     Its  preachers  have,  and 


SIVEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  155 

are  likely  long  to  have,  a  hard  time  of  it,  and  they  will 
much  oftener  be  regarded,  for  a  great  while  to  come, 
as  elegant  or  spurious  Jeremiahs  than  as  friends  and 
benefactors.  That,  however,  will  not  prevent  their 
5  doing  in  the  end  good  service  if  they  persevere.  And, 
meanwhile,  the  mode  of  action  they  have  to  pursue, 
and  the  sort  of  habits  they  must  fight  against,  ought 
to  be  made  quite  clear  for  every  one  to  see,  who 
may  be  willing  to  look  at  the  matter  attentively  and 

io  dispassionately. 

Faith  in  machinery  is,  I  said,  our  besetting  danger  ; 
often  in  machinery  most  absurdly  disproportioned  to 
the  end  which  this  machinery,  if  it  is  to  do  any  good 
at  all,  is  to  serve  ;  but  always  in  machinery,  as  if  it 

15  had  a  value  in  and  for  itself.  What  is  freedom  but 
machinery  ?  what  is  population  but  machinery  ?  what 
is  coal  but  machinery  ?  what  are  railroads  but 
machinery  ?  what  is  wealth  but  machinery  ?  what 
are,    even,    religious    organisations    but    machinery  ? 

20  Now  almost  every  voice  in  England  is  accustomed  to 
speak  of  these  things  as  if  they  were  precious  ends  in 
themselves,  and  therefore  had  some  of  the  characters 
of  perfection  indisputably  joined  to  them.  I  have 
before  now  noticed  Mr.  Roebuck's  stock  argument  for 

-25  proving  the  greatness  and  happiness  of  England  as 
she  is,  and  for  quite  stopping  the  mouths  of  all  gain- 
sayers.  Mr.  Roebuck  is  never  weary  of  reiterating 
this  argument  of  his,  so  I  do  not  know  why  I  should 
be  weary  of  noticing   it.     "  May  not   every  man  in 

30  England  say  what  he  likes  ?  " — Mr.  Roebuck  perpetu- 
ally asks  ;  and  that,  he  thinks,  is  quite  sufficient,  and 
when  every  man  may  say  what  he  likes,  our  aspira' 


156  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

tions  ought  to  be  satisfied.  But  the  aspirations  of 
culture,  which  is  the  study  of  perfection,  are  not  satis- 
fied, unless  what  men  say,  when  they  may  say  what 
they  like,  is  worth  saying, — has  good  in  it,  and  more 
good  than  bad.  In  the  same  way  the  Times,  replying  5 
to  some  foreign  strictures  on  the  dress,  looks,  and 
behaviour  of  the  English  abroad,  urges  that  the 
English  ideal  is  that  every  one  should  be  free  to  do 
and  to  look  just  as  he  likes.  But  culture  indefatiga- 
bly  tries,  not  to  make  what  each  raw  person  may  like  10 
the  rule  by  which  he  fashions  himself  ;  but  to  draw 
ever  nearer  to  a  sense  of  what  is  indeed  beautiful, 
graceful,  and  becoming,  and  to  get  the  raw  person  to 
like  that. 

And  in  the  same  way  with  respect  to  railroads  and  15 
coal.     Every   one   must    have   observed    the   strange 
language  current  during  the  late  discussions  as  to  the 
possible  failures  of  our  supplies  of  coal.     Our  coal, 
thousands  of  people  were  saying,  is  the  real  basis  of 
our  national  greatness  ;  if  our  coal  runs  short,  there  is  20 
an   end   of   the   greatness   of  England.     But   what  is 
greatness? — culture   makes    us    ask.     Greatness  is    a 
spiritual  condition  worthy  to  excite  love,  interest,  and 
admiration  ;    and    the    outward    proof   of    possessing 
greatness  is  that  we  excite  love,  interest,  and  admira-  25 
tion.     If  England  were  swallowed  up  by  the  sea  to- 
morrow,  which  of  the  two,  a  hundred  years   hence, 
would  most  excite  the  love,  interest,  and  admiration 
of  mankind, — would    most,   therefore,   show   the   evi- 
dences of  having  possessed  greatness, — the  England  30 
of  the  last  twenty  years,  or  the  England  of  Elizabeth, 
of  a  time  of  splendid  spiritual  effort,  but  when  our 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT.  157 

<*oal,  and  our  industrial  operations  depending  on  coal, 
were  very  little  developed  ?  Well,  then,  what  an 
unsound  habit  of  mind  it  must  be  which  makes  us 
talk   of  things  like  coal  or  iron   as  constituting   the 

5  greatness  of  England,  and  how  salutary  a  friend  is 
culture,  bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  thus 
dissipating  delusions  of  this  kind  and  fixing  standards 
of  perfection  that  are  real  ! 

Wealth,  again,  that  end  to  which   our  prodigious 

10  works  for  material  advantage  are  directed, — the  com- 
monest of  commonplaces  tells  us  how  men  are  always 
apt  to  regard  wealth  as  a  precious  end  in  itself ;  and 
certainly  they  have  never  been  so  apt  thus  to  regard 
it  as  they  are  in  England  at  the  present  time.     Never 

15  did  people  believe  anything  more  firmly  than  nine 
Englishmen  out  of  ten  at  the  present  day  believe  that 
our  greatness  and  welfare  are  proved  by  our  being  so 
very  rich.  Now,  the  use  of  culture  is  that  it  helps 
us,  by  means  of  its  spiritual  standard  of  perfection,  to 

?o regard  wealth  as  but  machinery,  and  not  only  to  say, 
as  a  matter  of  words  that  we  regard  wealth  as  but 
machinery,  but  really  to  perceive  and  feel  that  it  is 
so.  If  it  were  not  for  this  purging  effect  wrought 
upon    our   minds  by  culture,  the    whole    world,   the 

25  future  as  well  as  the  present,  would  inevitably  belong 
to  the  Philistines.  The  people  who  believe  most  that 
our  greatness  and  welfare  are  proved  by  our  being 
very  rich,  and  who  most  give  their  lives  and  thoughts 
to  becoming    rich,   are    just    the    very  people    whom 

30  we  call  Philistines.  Culture  says:  "Consider  these 
people,  then,  their  way  of  life,  their  habits,  their 
manners,  the  very  tones  of  their  voice  ;  look  at  them 


I5S  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

attentively ;  observe  the  literature  they  read,  the 
things  which  give  them  pleasure,  the  words  which 
come  forth  out  of  their  mouths,  the  thoughts  which 
make  the  furniture  of  their  minds  ;  would  any  amount 
of  wealth  be  worth  having  with  the  condition  that  5 
one  was  to  become  just  like  these  people  by  having 
it  ?  "  And  thus  culture  begets  a  dissatisfaction  which 
is  of  the  highest  possible  value  in  stemming  the 
common  tide  of  men's  thoughts  in  a  wealthy  and 
industrial  community,  and  which  saves  the  future,  10 
as  one  may  hope,  from  being  vulgarised,  even  if  it 
cannot  save  the  present. 

Population,  again,   and  bodily  health  and  vigour, 
are  things  which  are  nowhere  treated  in  such  an  un- 
intelligent, misleading,  exaggerated  way  as  in  England.  15 
Both  are  really  machinery  ;  yet  how  many  people  all 
around  us   do  we   see  rest  in  them  and  fail  to  look 
beyond   them  !     Why,    one  has  heard   people,   fresh 
from   reading   certain    articles  of  the    Times  on    the 
Registrar-General's  returns  of  marriages  and  births  in  20 
this  country,  who  would   talk  of  our   large  English 
families  in  quite  a  solemn  strain,  as  if  they  had  some- 
thing in  itself  beautiful,  elevating,  and  meritorious  in 
them  ;  as    if   the   British   Philistine  would  have  only 
to   present  himself  before  the  Great  Judge  with  his  25 
twelve  children,  in  order  to  be  received   among  the 
sheep  as  a  matter  of  right  ! 

But  bodily  health  and  vigour,  it  may  be  said,  are 
not  to  be  classed  with  wealth  and  population  as  mere 
machinery  ;  they  have  a  more  real  and  essential  value.  30 
True  ;  but  only  as  they  are  more  intimately  connected 
with  a  perfect  spiritual  condition  than  wealth  or  popu- 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  159 

lation  are.  The  moment  we  disjoin  them  from  the 
idea  of  a  perfect  spiritual  condition,  and  pursue  them, 
as  we  do  pursue  them,  for  their  own  sake  and  as  ends 
in  themselves,  our  worship  of  them  becomes  as  mere 

5  worship  of  machinery,  as  our  worship  of  wealth  or 
population,  and  as  unintelligent  and  vulgarising  a 
worship  as  that  is.  Every  one  with  anything  like  an 
adequate  idea  of  human  perfection  has  distinctly 
marked   this   subordination    to   higher   and    spiritual 

10  ends  of  the  cultivation  of  bodily  vigour  and  activity. 
"  Bodily  exercise  profiteth  little ;  but  godliness  is 
profitable  unto  all  things,"  says  the  author  of  the 
Epistle  to  Timothy.  And  the  utilitarian  Franklin 
says   just    as    explicitly  : — "  Eat  and  drink   such  an 

15  exact  quantity  as  suits  the  constitution  of  thy  body, 
in  reference  to  the  services  of  the  mind."  But  the  point 
of  view  of  culture,  keeping  the  mark  of  human  per- 
fection simply  and  broadly  in  view,  and  not  assigning 
to  this  perfection,  as  religion  or  utilitarianism  assigns 

20  to  it,  a  special  and  limited  character,  this  point  of 
view,  I  say,  of  culture  is  best  given  by  these  words 
of  Epictetus: — "  It  is  a  sign  of  d<£via,"  says  he, — that 
is,  of  a  nature  not  finely  tempered, — "  to  give  your- 
selves up  to  things  which  relate  to  the  body  ;  to  make, 

25  for  instance,  a  great  fuss  about  exercise,  a  great  fuss 
about  eating,  a  great  fuss  about  drinking,  a  great  fuss 
about  walking,  a  great  fuss  about  riding.  All  these 
things  ought  to  be  done  merely  by  the  way  :  the  for- 
mation of  the  spirit  and  character  must  be  our  real 

30  concern."  This  is  admirable  ;  and,  indeed,  the  Greek 
word  cv<j>vta,  a  finely  tempered  nature,  gives  exactly 
the  notion  of  perfection  as  culture  brings  us  to  con- 


160  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

ceive  it :  a  harmonious  perfection,  a  perfection  in 
which  the  characters  of  beauty  and  intelligence  are 
both  present,  which  unites  "  the  two  noblest  of  things," 
— as  Swift,  who  of  one  of  the  two,  at  any  rate,  had 
himself  all  too  little,  most  happily  calls  them  in  his  5 
Battle  of  the  Books, — "  the  two  noblest  of  things,  sweet- 
ness and  light.'"  The  e£<£u^s  is  the  man  who  tends 
towards  sweetness  and  light  ;  the  d^u^s  on  the  other 
hand,  is  our  Philistine.  The  immense  spiritual  sig- 
nificance of  the  Greeks  is  due  to  their  having  been  ic 
inspired  with  this  central  and  happy  idea  of  the 
essential  character  of  human  perfection ;  and  Mr. 
Bright's  misconception  of  culture,  as  a  smattering  of 
Greek  and  Latin,  comes  itself,  after  all,'  from  this 
wonderful  significance  of  the  Greeks  having  affected  15 
the  very  machinery  of  our  education,  and  is  in  itself 
a  kind  of  homage  to  it. 

In  thus  making  sweetness  and  light  to  be  charac- 
ters of  perfection,  culture  is  of  like  spirit  with  poetry, 
follows  one  law  with  poetry.     Far  more  than  on  our  20 
freedom,  our  population,  and  our  industrialism,  many 
amongst   us  rely   upon  our  religious  organisations  to 
save  us.     I  have  called  religion  a  yet  more  important 
manifestation  of  human  nature  than  poetry,  because 
it  has  worked  on  a  broader  scale  for  perfection,  and  25 
with  greater  masses  of  men.     But  the  idea  of  beauty 
and  of  a  human  nature  perfect  on  all  its  sides,  which 
is  the  dominant  idea  of  poetry,  is  a  true  and  invalu- 
able idea,  though  it  has  not  yet  had  the  success  that 
the   idea   of   conquering    the    obvious    faults    of  our  30 
animality,    and   of   a   human    nature   perfect  on  the 
moral  side, — which  is  the  dominant  idea  of  religion, — 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  i&i 

has  been  enabled  to  have  ;  and  it  is  destined,  adding 
to  itself  the  religious  idea  of  a  devout  energy,  to  trans- 
form and  govern  the  other. 

The  best  art  and  poetry  of  the  Greeks,  in  which 
5  religion  and  poetry  are  one,  in  which  the  idea  of 
beauty  and  of  a  human  nature  perfect  on  all  sides  adds 
to  itself  a  religious  and  devout  energy,  and  works  in 
the  strength  of  that,  is  on  this  account  of  such  sur- 
passing interest  and  instructiveness  for  us,  though  it 

iowas, — as,  having  regard  to  the  human  race  in  general, 
and,  indeed,  having  regard  to  the  Greeks  themselves, 
we  must  own, — a  premature  attempt,  an  attempt 
which  for  success  needed  the  moral  and  religious  fibre 
in  humanity  to  be  more  braced  and  developed  than  it 

15  had  yet  been.  But  Greece  did  not  err  in  having  the 
idea  of  beauty,  harmony,  and  complete  human  per- 
fection, so  present  and  paramount.  It  is  impossible 
to  have  this  idea  too  present  and  paramount  ;  only, 
the  moral  fibre  must  be  braced  too.     And  we,  because 

20  we  have  braced  the  moral  fibre,  are  not  on  that 
account  in  the  right  way,  if  at  the  same  time  the  idea 
of  beauty,  harmony,  and  complete  human  perfection, 
is  wanting  or  misapprehended  amongst  us  ;  and  evi- 
dently it  is  wanting  or  misapprehended  at  present. 

25  And  when  we  rely  as  we  do  on  our  religious  organisa- 
tions, which  in  themselves  do  not  and  cannot  give  us 
this  idea,  and  think  we  have  done  enough  if  we  make 
them  spread  and  prevail,  then  I  say,  we  fall  into  our 
common  fault  of  overvaluing  machinery. 

30  Nothing  is  more  common  than  for  people  to  con- 
found the  inward  peace  and  satisfaction  which  follows 
the  subduing  of  the  obvious   faults  of  our  animality 


1 62  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

with  what  I  may  call  absolute  inward  peace  and  satis- 
faction,— the  peace  and  satisfaction  which  are  reached 
as  we  draw  near  to  complete  spiritual  perfection,  and 
not  merely  to  moral  perfection,  or  rather  to  relative 
moral  perfection.  No  people  in  the  world  have  done  5 
more  and  struggled  more  to  attain  this  relative  moral 
perfection  than  our  English  race  has.  For  no  people 
in  the  world  has  the  command  to  resist  the  devil,  to 
overcome  the  wicked  one,  in  the  nearest  and  most  obvi- 
ous sense  of  those  words,  had  such  a  pressing  force  10 
and  reality.  And  we  have  had  our  reward,  not  only 
in  the  great  worldly  prosperity  which  our  obedience  to 
this  command  has  brought  us,  but  also,  and  far  more, 
in  great  inward  peace  and  satisfaction.  But  to  me 
few  things  are  more  pathetic  than  to  see  people,  on  15 
the  strength  of  the  inward  peace  and  satisfaction 
which  their  rudimentary  efforts  towards  perfection 
have  brought  them,  employ,  concerning  their  incom- 
plete perfection  and  the  religious  organisations  within 
which  they  have  found  it,  language  which  properly  20 
applies  only  to  complete  perfection,  and  is  a  far-off 
echo  of  the  human  soul's  prophecy  of  it.  Religion 
itself,  I  need  hardly  say,  supplies  them  in  abund- 
ance with  this  grand  language.  And  very  freely  do 
they  use  it  ;  yet  it  is  really  the  severest  possible  25 
criticism  of  such  an  incomplete  perfection  as  alone 
we  have  yet  reached  through  our  religious  organi- 
sations. 

The  impulse   of   the    English    race  towards  moral 
development  and  self-conquest  has  nowhere  so  power- 30 
fully  manifested  itself  as   in   Puritanism.      Nowhere 
has  Puritanism  found  so  adequate  an  expression  as  in 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  163 

the  religious  organisation  of  the  Independents.  The 
modern  Independents  have  a  newspaper,  the  Noncon- 
formist, written  with  great  sincerity  and  ability.  The 
motto,  the  standard,  the  profession  of  faith  which  this 
5  organ  of  theirs  carries  aloft,  is  :  "  The  Dissidence  of 
Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  reli- 
gion." There  is  sweetness  and  light,  and  an  ideal  of 
complete  harmonious  human  perfection  !  One  need 
not  go  to  culture  and  poetry  to  find  language  to  judge 

10  it.  Religion,  with  its  instinct  for  perfection,  supplies 
language  to  judge  it,  language,  too,  which  is  in  our 
mouths  every  day.  "  Finally,  be  of  one  mind,  united 
in  feeling,"  says  St.  Peter.  There  is  an  ideal  which 
judges  the  Puritan  ideal  :  "The  Dissidence  of  Dissent 

15  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion!" 
And  religious  organisations  like  this  are  what  people 
believe  in,  rest  in,  would  give  their  lives  for  !  Such,  I 
say,  is  the  wonderful  virtue  of  even  the  beginnings  of 
perfection,  of  having  conquered  even  the  plain  fauhs 

20  of  our  animality,  that  the  religious  organisation  which 
has  helped  us  to  do  it  can  seem  to  us  something 
precious,  salutary,  and  to  be  propagated,  even  when 
it  wears  such  a  brand  of  imperfection  on  its  forehead 
as  this.     And  men  have  got  such  a  habit  of  giving  to 

25  the  language  of  religion  a  special  application,  of 
making  it  a  mere  jargon,  that  for  the  condemnation 
which  religion  itself  passes  on  the  shortcomings  of 
their  religious  organisations  they  have  no  ear  ;  they 
are  sure  to  cheat  themselves  and  to  explain  this  con- 

30  demnation  away.  They  can  only  be  reached  by  the 
criticism  which  culture,  like  poetry,  speaking  a  lan- 
guage not  to  be  sophisticated,  and  resolutely  testing 


1 64  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

these  organisations  by  the  ideal  of  a  human  perfection 
complete  on  all  sides,  applies  to  them. 

But  men  of  culture  and  poetry,  it  will  be  said,  are 
again  and  again  failing,  and  failing  conspicuously,  in 
the  necessary  first  stage  to  a  harmonious  perfection,  5 
in  the  subduing  of  the  great   obvious  faults  of  our 
animality,  which    it    is    the    glory  of    these    religious 
organisations  to  have   helped  us   to  subdue.      True, 
they  do  often  so  fail.     They  have  often  been  without 
the  virtues  as  well  as  the  faults  of  the  Puritan  ;    it  has  ia 
been  one  of  their  dangers  that  they  so  felt  the  Puri- 
tan's faults  that  they  too  much  neglected  the  practice 
of  his  virtues.     1  will  not,  however,  exculpate  them  at 
the   Puritan's    expense.       They   have  often   failed  in 
morality,   and   morality   is   indispensable.     And   they  15 
have  been  punished  for  their  failure,  as  the  Puritan 
has  been  rewarded   for  his  performance.     They  have 
been  punished  wherein  they  erred  ;    but  their  ideal  of 
beauty,  of  sweetness  and  light,  and   a  human  nature 
complete  on  all  its  sides,  remains  the  true  ideal  of  per-  20 
fection  still  ;   just  as  the  Puritan's  ideal  of  perfection 
remains  narrow  and  inadequate,  although  for  what  he 
did  well  he  has  been  richly  rewarded.     Notwithstand- 
ing the  mighty  results  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers'  voyage, 
they    and    their   standard    of    perfection    are    rightly  25 
judged   when   we  figure  to  ourselves   Shakspeare  or 
Virgil, — souls   in    whom    sweetness    and    light,    and 
all    that    in    human  nature    is    most    humane,    were 
eminent, — accompanying  them  on  their  voyage,  and 
think  what  intolerable  company  Shakspeare  and  Vir-  30 
gil  would  have  found  them  !     In  the  same  way  let  us 
Judge    the    religious   organisations   which   we   see  all 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  I&5 

around  us.  Do  not  let  us  deny  the  good  and  the 
happiness  which  they  have  accomplished  ;  but  do  not 
let  us  fail  to  see  clearly  that  their  idea  of  human  per- 
fection is  narrow  and  inadequate,  and  that  the  Dissi- 

5  dence  of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protes- 
tant religion  will  never  bring  humanity  to  its  true 
goal.  As  I  said  with  regard  to  wealth  :  Let  us  look 
at  the  life  of  those  who  live  in  and  for  it, — so  I  say 
with  regard  to  the  religious  organisations.     Look  at 

10  the  life  imaged  in  such  a  newspaper  as  the  Noncon- 
formist,— a  life  of  jealousy  of  the  Establishment,  dis- 
putes, tea-meetings,  openings  of  chapels,  sermons  ; 
and  then  think  of  it  as  an  ideal  of  a  human  life  com- 
pleting itself  on  all   sides,  and    aspiring  with  all  its 

15  organs  after  sweetness,  light,  and  perfection  ! 

Another  newspaper,  representing,  like  the  Noncon- 
formist, one  of  the  religious  organisations  of  this 
country,  was  a  short  time  ago  giving  an  account  of 
the  crowd  at  Epsom  on  the  Derby  day,  and  of  all  the 

20  vice  and  hideousness  which  was  to  be  seen  in  that 
crowd  ;  and  then  the  writer  turned  suddenly  round 
upon  Professor  Huxley,  and  asked  him  how  he  pro- 
posed to  cure  all  this  vice  and  hideousness  without 
religion.     I  confess  I  felt  disposed  to  ask  the  asker 

25  this  question  :  and  how  do  you  propose  to  cure  it 
with  such  a  religion  as  yours  ?  How  is  the  ideal  of  a 
life  so  unlovely,  so  unattractive,  so  incomplete,  so  nar- 
row, so  far  removed  from  a  true  and  satisfying  ideal 
of  human  perfection,  as  is  the  life  of  your  religious 

30  organisation  as  you  yourself  reflect  it,  to  conquer  and 
transform  all  this  vice  and  hideousness?  Indeed,  the 
strongest  plea  for  the  study  of  perfection  as  pursued 


166  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

by  culture,  the  clearest  proof  of  the  actual  inadequacy 
of  the  idea  of  perfection  held  by  the  religious  organis- 
ations,— expressing,  as  I  have  said,  the  most  wide- 
spread effort  which  the  human  race  has  yet  made 
after  perfection, — is  to  be  found  in  the  state  of  our  5 
life  and  society  with  these  in  possession  of  it,  and 
having  been  in  possession  of  it  I  know  not  how  many 
hundred  years.  We  are  all  of  us  included  in  some 
religious  organisation  or  other  ;  we  all  call  ourselves, 
in  the  sublime  and  aspiring  language  of  religion  which  10 
I  have  before  noticed,  children  of  God.  Children  of 
God  ; — it  is  an  immense  pretension  ! — and  how  are 
we  to  justify  it  ?  By  the  works  which  we  do,  and  the 
words  which  we  speak.  And  the  work  which  we 
collective  children  of  God  do,  our  grand  centre  of  15 
life,  our  city  which  we  have  builded  for  us  to  dwell  in, 
is  London  !  London,  with  its  unutterable  external 
hideousness,  and  with  its  internal  canker  of  publice 
egestas,  privatim  opulentia, — to  use  the  words  which 
Sallust  puts  into  Cato's  mouth  about  Rome, — un-20 
equalled  in  the  world  !  The  word,  again,  which  we 
children  of  God  speak,  the  voice  which  most  hits  our 
collective  thought,  the  newspaper  with  the  largest 
circulation  in  England,  nay,  with  the  largest  circula- 
tion in  the  whole  world,  is  the  Daily  Telegraph  !  I  25 
say  that  when  our  religious  organisations, — which  I 
admit  to  express  the  most  considerable  effort  after 
perfection  that  our  race  has  yet  made, — land  us  in  no 
better  result  than  this,  it  is  high  time  to  examine 
carefully  their  idea  of  perfection,  to  see  whether  it  30 
does  not  leave  out  of  account  sides  and  forces  of 
human    nature   which   we  might    turn   to  great   use ; 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  167 

whether  it  would  not  be  more  operative  if  it  were 
more  complete.  And  I  say  that  the  English  reliance 
on  our  religious  organisations  and  on  their  ideas  of 
human  perfection  just  as  they  stand,  is  like  our  reli- 
5  ance  on  freedom,  on  muscular  Christianity,  on  popula- 
tion, on  coal,  on  wealth, — mere  belief  in  machinery, 
and  unfruitful  ;  and  that  it  is  wholesomely  counter- 
acted by  culture,  bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are, 
and  on  drawing  the  human   race  onwards  to  a  more 

10  complete,  a  harmonious  perfection. 

Culture,  however,  shows  its  single-minded  love  of 
perfection,  its  desire  simply  to  make  reason  and  the 
will  of  God  prevail,  its  freedom  from  fanaticism,  by  its 
attitude  towards  all  this  machinery,  even  while  it  insists 

15  that  it  is  machinery.  Fanatics,  seeing  the  mischief 
men  do  themselves  by  their  blind  belief  in  some 
machinery  or  other, — whether  it  is  wealth  and  indus- 
trialism, or  whether  it  is  the  cultivation  of  bodily 
strength  and  activity,  or  whether  it  is  a  political  organ- 

2oisation,— or  whether  it  is  a  religious  organisation,— 
oppose  with  might  and  main  the  tendency  to  this  or 
that  political  and  religious  organisation,  or  to  games 
and  athletic  exercises,  or  to  wealth  and  industrialism, 
and  try  violently  to  stop  it.     But  the  flexibility  which 

25  sweetness  and  light  give,  and  which  is  one  of  the 
rewards  of  culture  pursued  in  good  faith,  enables  a 
man  to  see  that  a  tendency  may  be  necessary,  and 
even,  as  a  preparation  for  something  in  the  future, 
salutary,  and  yet  that  the  generations  or  individuals 

30  who  obey  this  tendency  are  sacrificed  to  it,  that  they 
fall  short  of  the  hope  of  perfection  by  following  it  ; 
and  that  its  mischiefs  are  to  be  criticised,  lest  it  should 


l68  SWEETNESS  A  AW   LIGHT. 

take  too  firm  a  hold  and  last  after  it  has  served  its 
purpose. 

Mr.    Gladstone  well  pointed  out,  in  a  speech    at 
Paris, — and  others  have  pointed  out  the  same  thing, — 
how  necessary  is  the  present  great  movement  towards  5 
wealth  and  industrialism,  in  order  to  lay  broad  founda- 
tions  of  material   well-being  for  the    society  of    the 
future.     The  worst  of  these  justifications  is,  that  they 
are  generally  addressed   to  the  very  people  engaged, 
body  and  soul,  in  the  movement  in  question  ;  at  all  10 
events,  that  they  are  always  seized  with  the  greatest 
avidity  by  these  people,  and  taken   by  them   as  quite 
justifying  their  life  ;  and  that  thus  they  tend  to  harden 
them  in  their  sins.     Now,  culture  admits  the  necessity 
of  the  movement  towards  fortune-making  and  exagger- 15 
ated  industrialism,  readily  allows  that  the  future  may 
derive  benefit  from  it  ;  but   insists,  at  the  same  time, 
that  the  passing  generations  of  industrialists,-— form- 
ing, for  the  most  part,  the  stout  main  body  of  Philis- 
tinism,— are   sacrificed  to  it.     In  the   same  way,  the  20 
result  of  all   the  games  and  sports  which   occupy  the 
passing  generation  of  boys  and  young  men  may  be 
the  establishment  of  a  better  and  sounder  physical  type 
for  the   future  to   work   with,     Culture   does   not   set 
itself  against  the  games  and   sports;  it   congratulates  25 
the  future,  and  hopes  it  will  make  a  good  use  of  its 
improved  physical  basis  ;  but  it  points  out  that  our 
passing  generation   of  boys  and  young  men  is,  mean- 
time, sacrificed.     Puritanism  was  perhaps  necessary  to 
develop  the  moral  fibre  of  the  English  race,  Noncon-  30 
formity  to  break  the  yoke  of  ecclesiastical  domination 
over  men's  minds  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  freedom 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  I&9 

of  thought  in  the  distant  future  ;  still,  culture  points 
out  that  the  harmonious  perfection  of  generations  of 
Puritans  and  Nonconformists  have  been,  in  conse- 
quence, sacrificed.  Freedom  of  speech  may  be 
5  necessary  for  the  society  of  the  future,  but  the  young 
lions  of  the  Daily  Telegraph  in  the  meanwhile  are 
sacrificed.  A  voice  for  every  man  in  his  country's 
government  may  be  necessary  for  the  society  of  the 
future,  but  meanwhile  Mr.  Beales  and  Mr.  Bradlaugh 

loare  sacrificed. 

Oxford,  the  Oxford  of  the  past,  has  many  faults  ; 
and  she  has  heavily  paid  for  them  in  defeat,  in  isola- 
tion, in  want  of  hold  upon  the  modern  world.  Yet  we 
in  Oxford,  brought  up  amidst  the  beauty  and   sweet- 

15  ness  of  that  beautiful  place,  have  not  failed  to  seize 
one  truth, — the  truth  that  beauty  and  sweetness  are 
essential  characters  of  a  complete  human  perfection. 
When  I  insist  on  this,  I  am  all  in  the  faith  and  tradi- 
tion of  Oxford.     I  say  boldly  that  this  our  sentiment 

20  for  beauty  and  sweetness,  our  sentiment  against 
hideousness  and  rawness,  has  been  at  the  bottom  of 
our  attachment  to  so  many  beaten  causes,  of  our 
opposition  to  so  many  triumphant  movements.  And 
the  sentiment  is  true,  and  has  never  been  wholly  de- 

25  feated,  and  has  shown  its  power  even  in  its  defeat. 
We  have  not  won  our  political  battles,  we  have  not 
carried  our  main  points,  we  have  not  stopped  our  ad- 
versaries' advance,  we  have  not  marched  victoriously 
with  the  modern  world  ;  but  we  have  told  silently  upon 

30  the  mind  of  the  country,  we  have  prepared  currents  of 
feeling  which  sap  our  adversaries'  position  when  it 
seems  gained,  we  have   kept  up  our  own  communica' 


170  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

tions  with  the  future.  Look  at  the  course  of  the  great 
movement  which  shook  Oxford  to  its  centre  some 
thirty  years  ago  !  It  was  directed,  as  any  one  who 
reads  Dr.  Newman's  Apology  may  see,  against  what  in 
one  word  may  be  called  "  Liberalism."  Liberalism  5 
prevailed  ;  it  was  the  appointed  force  to  do  the  work 
of  the  hour  ;  it  was  necessary,  it  was  inevitable  that  it 
should  prevail.  The  Oxford  movement  was  broken,  it 
failed  ;  our  wrecks  are  scattered  on  every  shore  : — 

Qua;  regio  in  terris  nostri  non  plena  laboris?  10 

But  what  was  it,  this  liberalism,  as  Dr.  Newman  saw 
it,  and  as  it  really  broke  the  Oxford  movement?  It 
was  the  great  middle-class  liberalism,  which  had  for 
the  cardinal  points  of  its  belief  the  Reform  Bill  of 
1832,  and  local  self-government,  in  politics;  in  the  15 
social  sphere,  free-trade,  unrestricted  competition, 
and  the  making  of  large  industrial  fortunes  ;  in  the 
religious  sphere,  the  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the 
Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion.  I  do  not 
say  that  other  and  more  intelligent  forces  than  this  20 
were  not  opposed  to  the  Oxford  movement  :  but  this 
was  the  force  which  really  beat  it  ;  this  was  the  force 
which  Dr.  Newman  felt  himself  fighting  with  ;  this 
was  the  force  which  till  only  the  other  day  seemed  to 
be  the  paramount  force  in  this  country,  and  to  be  in  25 
possession  of  the  future  ;  this  was  the  force  whose 
achievements  fill  Mr.  Lowe  with  such  inexpressible 
admiration,  and  whose  rule  he  was  so  horror-struck 
to  see  threatened.  And  where  is  this  great  force  of 
Philistinism  now?  It  is  thrust  into  the  second  rank,  30 
it   is   become  a  power  of  yesterday,  it  has  lost  the 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT.  171 

future.  A  new  power  has  suddenly  appeared,  a 
power  which  it  is  impossible  yet  to  judge  fully,  but 
which  is  certainly  a  wholly  different  force  from  mid- 
dle-class liberalism  ;  different  in  its  cardinal  points  of 
5  belief,  different  in  its  tendencies  in  every  sphere.  It 
loves  and  admires  neither  the  legislation  of  middle- 
class  Parliaments,  nor  the  local  self-government  of 
middle-class  vestries,  nor  the  unrestricted  competition 
of  middle-class  industrialists,   nor  the  dissidence   of 

10  middle-class  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  middle- 
class  Protestant  religion.  I  am  not  now  praising  this 
new  force,  or  saying  that  its  own  ideals  are  better ; 
all  I  say  is,  that  they  are  wholly  different.  And  who 
will  estimate  how  much  the  currents  of  feeling  created 

15  by  Dr.  Newman's  movements,  the  keen  desire  for 
beauty  and  sweetness  which  it  nourished,  the  deep 
aversion  it  manifested  to  the  hardness  and  vulgarity 
of  middle-class  liberalism,  the  strong  light  it  turned 
on  the  hideous  and  grotesque  illusions  of  middle-class 

20  Protestantism, — who  will  estimate  how  much  all  these 
contributed  to  swell  the  tide  of  secret  dissatisfaction 
which  has  mined  the  ground  under  self-confident 
liberalism  of  the  last  thirty  years,  and  has  prepared 
the  way  for    its  sudden  collapse    and    supersession  ? 

25  It  is  in  this  manner  that  the  sentiment  of  Oxford  for 
beauty  and  sweetness  conquers,  and  in  this  manner 
long  may  it  continue  to  conquer ! 

In  this  manner  it  works  to  the  same  end  as  culture, 
and  there  is  plenty  of  work  for  it  yet  to  do.     I  have 

30  said  that  the  new  and  more  democratic  force  which  is 
now  superseding  our  old  middle-class  liberalism  can- 
not yet  be  rightly  judged.     It  has  its  main  tendencies 


172  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

still  to  form.  We  hear  promises  of  its  giving  us 
administrative  reform,  law  reform,  reform  of  educa- 
tion, and  I  know  not  what ;  but  those  promises  come 
rather  from  its  advocates,  wishing  to  make  a  good 
plea  for  it  and  to  justify  it  for  superseding  middle- 5 
class  liberalism,  than  from  clear  tendencies  which  it 
has  itself  yet  developed.  But  meanwhile  it  has 
plenty  of  well-intentioned  friends  against  whom 
culture  may  with  advantage  continue  to  uphold 
steadily  its  ideal  of  human  perfection  ;  that  this  is  10 
an  inward  spiritual  activity,  having  for  its  characters 
increased  sweetness,  increased  light,  increased  life, 
increased  sympathy.  Mr.  Bright,  who  has  a  foot  in 
both  worlds,  the  world  of  middle-class  liberalism  and 
the  world  of  democracy,  but  who  brings  most  of  his  15 
ideas  from  the  world  of  middle-class  liberalism  in 
which  he  was  bred,  always  inclines  to  inculcate  that 
faith  in  machinery  to  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Eng- 
lishmen are  so  prone,  and  which  has  been  the  bane 
of  middle-class  liberalism.  He  complains  with  a  29 
sorrowful  indignation  of  people  who  "  appear  to  have 
no  proper  estimate  of  the  value  of  the  franchise";  he 
leads  his  disciples  to  believe, — what  the  Englishman 
is  always  too  ready  to  believe, — that  the  having  a 
vote,  like  the  having  a  large  family,  or  a  large  busi-25 
ness,  or  large  muscles,  has  in  itself  some  edifying  and 
perfecting  effect  upon  human  nature.  Or  else  he 
cries  out  to  the  democracy, — "the  men,"  as  he  calls 
them,  "  upon  whose  shoulders  the  greatness  of  Eng- 
land rests," — he  cries  out  to  them  :  "See  what  you 30 
have  done  !  I  look  over  this  country  and  see  the 
cities  you  have  built,  the  railroads  you  have  made, 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  173 

the  manufactures  you  have  produced,  the  cargoes 
which  freight  the  ships  of  the  greatest  mercantile 
navy  the  world  has  ever  seen  !  I  see  that  you  have 
converted  by  your  labours  what  was  once  a  wilder- 
5  ness,  these  islands,  into  a  fruitful  garden  ;  I  know 
that  you  have  created  this  wealth,  and  are  a  nation 
whose  name  is  a  word  of  power  throughout  all 
the  world."  Why,  this  is  just  the  very  style  of 
laudation    with    which    Mr.    Roebuck    or    Mr.    Lowe 

10  debauches  the  minds  of  the  middle  classes,  and  makes 
such  Philistines  of  them.  It  is  the  same  fashion  of 
teaching  a  man  to  value  himself  not  on  what  he  is, 
not  on  his  progress  in  sweetness  and  light,  but  on 
the  number  of  the  railroads  he  has  constructed,  or 

15  the  bigness  of  the  tabernacle  he  has  built.  Only  the 
middle  classes  are  told  they  have  done  it  all  with 
their  energy,  self-reliance,  and  capital,  and  the 
democracy  are  told  they  have  done  it  all  with  their 
hands  and  sinews.     But   teaching  the   democracy  to 

so  put  its  trust  in  achievements  of  this  kind  is  merely 
training  them  to  be  Philistines  to  take  the  place  of 
the  Philistines  whom  they  are  superseding  ;  and  they 
too,  like  the  middle  class,  will  be  encouraged  to  sit 
down  at  the  banquet  of  the  future  without  having  on 

25  a  wedding  garment,  and  nothing  excellent  can  then 
come  from  them.  Those  who  know  their  besetting 
faults,  those  who  have  watched  them  and  listened  to 
them,  or  those  who  will  read  the  instructive  account 
recently    given   of   them    by   one  of  themselves,   the 

30  Journeyman  Engineer,  will  agree  that  the  idea  which 
culture  sets  before  us  of  perfection, — an  increased 
spiritual  activity,  having   for  its  characters   increased 


174  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

sweetness,  increased  light,  increased  life,  increased 
sympathy, — is  an  idea  which  the  new  democracy 
needs  far  more  than  the  idea  of  the  blessedness  of  the 
franchise,  or  the  wonderfulness  of  its  own  industrial 
performances.  5 

Other  well-meaning  friends  of  this  new  power  are 
for  leading  it,  not  in  the  old  ruts  of  middle-class 
Philistinism,  but  in  ways  which  are  naturally  alluring 
to  the  feet  of  democracy,  though  in  this  country  they 
are  novel  and  untried  ways.  I  may  call  them  the  iq 
ways  of  Jacobinism.  Violent  indignation  with  the 
past,  abstract  systems  of  renovation  applied  whole- 
sale, a  new  doctrine  drawn  up  in  black  and  white  for 
elaborating  down  to  the  very  smallest  details  a  rational 
society  for  the  future, — these  are  the  ways  of  Jacob-  15 
inism.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  and  other  disciples 
of  Comte, — one  of  them,  Mr.  Congreve,  is  an  old 
friend  of  mine,  and  I  am  glad  to  have  an  opportunity 
of  publicly  expressing  my  respect  for  his  talents  and 
character, — are  among  the  friends  of  democracy  who  20 
are  for  leading  it  in  paths  of  this  kind.  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  is  very  hostile  to  culture,  and  from  a  natural 
enough  motive;  for  culture  is  the  eternal  opponent 
of  the  two  things  which  are  the  signal  marks  of 
Jacobinism, — its  fierceness,  and  its  addiction  to  an  25 
abstract  system.  Culture  is  always  assigning  to 
system-makers  and  systems  a  smaller  share  in  the 
bent  of  human  destiny  than  their  friends  like.  A 
current  in  people's  minds  sets  towards  new  ideas  ; 
people  are  dissatisfied  with  their  old  narrow  stock  of  30 
Philistine  ideas,  Anglo-Saxon  ideas,  or  any  other; 
and  some  man,  some  Bentham  or  Comte,  who  has  the 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT.  175 

real  merit  of  having  early  and  strongly  felt  and  helped 
the  new  current,  but  who  brings  plenty  of  narrowness 
and  mistakes  of  his  own  into  his  feeling  and  help  of 
it,  is  credited  with  being  the  author  of  the  whole 
5  current,  the  fit  person  to  be  entrusted  with  its  regula- 
tion and  to  guide  the  human  race. 

The  excellent   German   historian  of  the  mythology 

of  Rome,  Preller,  relating  the  introduction  at   Rome 

under  the  Tarquins  of  the  worship  of  Apollo,  the  god 

ioof   light,    healing,    and    reconciliation,    will    have    us 

observe  that  it  was  not  so  much  the   Tarquins   who 

brought  to   Rome  the  new  worship   of   Apollo,  as  a 

current  in   the  mind  of  the  Roman   people  which  set 

powerfully  at  that  time  towards  a  new  worship  of  this 

15  kind,  and  away  from  the  old  run  of  Latin  and  Sabine 

religious  ideas.     In  a  similar  way,  culture  directs  our 

attention   to  the  natural   current   there  is  in   human 

affairs,  and  to   its  continual  working,  and  will  not  let 

us  rivet  our  faith  upon  any  one  man  and  his  doings. 

20  It  makes  us  see  not  only  his  good  side,  but  also  how 

much  in  him  was  of  necessity  limited  and  transient ; 

nay,  it  even  feels  a  pleasure,  a  sense  of  an  increased 

freedom  and  of  an  ampler  future,  in  so  doing. 

I  remember,  when  I  was  under  the  influence  of  a 
25  mind  to  which  I  feel  the  greatest  obligations,  the 
mind  of  a  man  who  was  the  very  incarnation  of  sanity 
and  clear  sense,  a  man  the  most  considerable,  it  seems 
to  me,  whom  America  has  yet  produced, — Benjamin 
Franklin, — I  remember  the  relief  with  which,  after 
30  long  feeling  the  sway  of  Franklin's  imperturbable 
common-sense,  I  carne  upon  a  project  of  his  for  a  new 
version  of  the  Book  of  Job,  to  replace  the  old  ver« 


176  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

sion,  the  style  of  which,  says  Franklin,  has  become 
obsolete,  and  thence  less  agreeable.  "  I  give,"  he 
continues,  "  a  few  verses,  which  may  serve  as  a 
sample  of  the  kind  of  version  I  would  recommend." 
We  all  recollect  the  famous  verse  in  our  translation  :  5 
"  Then  Satan  answered  the  Lord  and  said  :  '  Doth 
Job  fear  God  for  nought  ? '  "  Franklin  makes  this  : 
"  Does  your  Majesty  imagine  that  Job's  good  conduct 
is  the  effect  of  mere  personal  attachment  and  affec- 
tion?" I  well  remember  how,  when  first  I  read  that,  10 
I  drew  a  deep  breath  of  relief,  and  said  to  myself  : 
"After  all,  there  is  a  stretch  of  humanity  beyond 
Franklin's  victorious  good  sense  !  "  So,  after  hearing 
Bentham  cried  loudly  up  as  the  renovator  of  modern 
society,  and  Bentham's  mind  and  ideas  proposed  as  15 
the  rulers  of  our  future,  I  open  the  Deontology.  There 
I  read  :  "  While  Xenophon  was  writing  his  history 
and  Euclid  teaching  geometry,  Socrates  and  Plato 
were  talking  nonsense  under  pretence  of  talking  wis- 
dom and  morality.  This  morality  of  theirs  consisted  2c 
in  words  ;  this  wisdom  of  theirs  was  the  denial  of 
matters  known  to  every  man's  experience."  From 
the  moment  of  reading  that,  I  am  delivered  from  the 
bondage  of  Bentham  !  the  fanaticism  of  his  adherents 
can  touch  me  no  longer.  I  feel  the  inadequacy  of  25 
his  mind  and  ideas  for  supplying  the  rule  of  human 
society,  for  perfection. 

Culture  tends  always  thus  to  deal  with  the  men  of 
a  system,   of   disciples,   of  a   school  ;  with   men   like 
Comte,  or  the  late    Mr.  Buckle,  or   Mr.   Mill.     How- 30 
ever  much  it  may  find  to   admire  in  these  personages, 
or  in  some  of   them,  it    nevertheless    remembers  the 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  177 

text  :  "Be  not  ye  called  Rabbi!  "  and  it  soon  passes 
on  from  any  Rabbi.  But  Jacobinism  loves  a  Rabbi  ; 
it  does  not  want  to  pass  on  from  its  Rabbi  in  pursuit 
of  a  future  and  still  unreached  perfection  ;  it  wants 
5  its  Rabbi  and  his  ideas  to  stand  for  perfection,  that 
they  may  with  the  more  authority  recast  the  world  ; 
and  for  Jacobinism,  therefore,  culture, — eternally 
passing  onwards  and  seeking, — is  an  impertinence 
and  an  offence.     But  culture,  just  because  it  resists 

10  this  tendency  of  Jacobinism  to  impose  on  us  a  man 
with  limitations  and  errors  of  his  own  along  with  the 
true  ideas  of  which  he  is  the  organ,  really  does  the 
world  and  Jacobinism  itself  a  service. 

So,  too,  Jacobinism,  in  its  fierce  hatred  of  the  past 

15  and  of  those  whom  it  makes  liable  for  the  sins  of  the 
past,  cannot  away  with  the  inexhaustible  indulgence 
proper  to  culture,  the  consideration  of  circumstances, 
the  severe  judgment  of  actions  joined  to  the  merciful 
judgment  of  persons.     "The    man    of   culture    is    in 

20  politics,"  cries  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  "  one  of  the 
poorest  mortals  alive  !  "  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  wants 
to  be  doing  business,  and  he  complains  that  the  man 
of  culture  stops  him  with  a  "  turn  for  small  fault- 
finding, love  of  selfish  ease,  and  indecision  in  action." 

25  Of  what  use  is  culture,  he  asks,  except  for  "a  critic 
of  new  books  or  a  professor  of  belles-lettres  ?  "  Why, 
it  is  of  use  because,  in  presence  of  the  fierce  exaspera- 
tion which  breathes,  or  rather,  I  may  say,  hisses 
through  the  whole  production  in  which  Mr.  Frederic 

30  Harrison  asks  that  question,  it  reminds  us  that  the 
perfection  of  human  nature  is  sweetness  and  light. 
It  is  of  use  because,  like  religion, — that  other  effort 


1 
T7S  SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT. 

after  perfection, — it  testifies  that,  where  bitter  envy- 
ing and  strife  are,  there  is  confusion  and  every  evil 
work. 

The  pursuit  of  perfection,  then,  is  the  pursuit  of 
sweetness  and   light.     He  who   works  for  sweetness  5 
and  light,  works  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God 
prevail.     He  who  works  for  machinery,  he  who  works 
for  hatred,  works  only  for  confusion.     Culture  looks 
beyond  machinery,  culture  hates  hatred  ;  culture  has 
one  great  passion,  the  passion  for  sweetness  and  light,  iq 
Tt  has  one  even  yet  greater  ! — the  passion  for  making 
them  prevail.     It  is  not  satisfied  till  we  all  come  to  a 
perfect  man  ;  it  knows  that  the  sweetness  and  light 
of  the  few  must  be  imperfect  until  the  raw  and  un- 
kindled  masses  of  humanity  are  touched  with  sweet- 15 
ness  and   light.     If    I    have  not  shrunk   from  saying 
that  we  must  work  for  sweetness  and  light,  so  neither 
have  I  shrunk  from  saying  that  we  must  have  a  broad 
basis,  must  have  sweetness  and  light  for  as  many  as 
possible.     Again  and  again  I  have  insisted  how  those  2a 
are  the  happy  moments  of  humanity,  how  those  are 
the  marking  epochs  of  a  people's  life,  how  those  are 
the  flowering  times  for  literature  and  art  and  all  the 
creative  power  of  genius,  when  there  is  a  national  glow 
of  life  and  thought,  when    the  whole  of  society  is  in  25 
the  fullest  measure  permeated  by  thought,  sensible  to 
beauty,  intelligent  and  alive.     Only  it  must  be  real 
thought    and    real  beauty ;    real   sweetness  and    real 
light.     Plenty  of  people  will  try  to  give  the  masses, 
as  they  call   them,  an  intellectual  food  prepared  and  3c 
adapted  in  the  way  they  think  proper  for  the  actual 
condition  of  the  masses.     The  ordinary  popular  litera- 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT.  179 

ture  is  an  example  of  this  way  of  working  on  the 
masses.  Plenty  of  people  will  try  to  indoctrinate  the 
masses  with  the  set  of  ideas  and  judgments  constitut- 
ing the  creed  of  their  own  profession  or  party.     Our 

5  religious  and  political  organisations  give  an  example 
of  this  way  of  working  on  the  masses.  I  condemn 
neither  way  ;  but  culture  works  differently.  It  does 
not  try  to  teach  down  to  the  level  of  inferior  classes  ; 
it  does  not  try  to  win  them  for  this  or  that  sect  of  its 

10  own,  with  ready-made  judgments  and  watchwords. 
It  seeks  to  do  away  with  classes  ;  to  make  the  best 
that  has  been  thought  and  known  in  the  world  current 
everywhere  ;  to  make  all  men  live  in  an  atmosphere 
of  sweetness  and  light,  where  they  may  use  ideas,  as 

15  it  uses  them  itself,  freely, — nourished,  and  not  bound 
by  them. 

This  is  the  social  idea  ;  and  the  men  of  culture  are 
the  true  apostles  of  equality.  The  great  men  of  cul- 
ture are  those  who  have  had  a  passion  for  diffusing, 

20  for  making  prevail,  for  carrying  from  one  end  of 
society  to  the  other,  the  best  knowledge,  the  best 
ideas  of  their  time  ;  who  have  laboured  to  divest 
knowledge  of  all  that  was  harsh,  uncouth,  difficult, 
abstract,  professional,   exclusive  ;  to  humanise  it,  to 

25  make  it  efficient  outside  the  clique  of  the  cultivated 
and  learned,  yet  still  remaining  the  best  knowledge 
and  thought  of  the  time,  and  a  true  source,  therefore, 
of  sweetness  and  light.  Such  a  man  was  Abelard  in 
the  Middle   Ages,  in   spite  of  all   his  imperfections  ; 

30  and  thence  the  boundless  emotion  and  enthusiasm 
which  Abelard  excited.  Such  were  Lessing  and 
Herder  in  Germany,  at  the  end  of  the  last  century; 


180  SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT. 

and  their  services  to  Germany  were  in  this  way  in- 
estimably precious.  Generations  will  pass,  and  literary 
monuments  will  accumulate,  and  works  far  more  per- 
fect than  the  works  of  Lessing  and  Herder  will  be 
produced  in  Germany  ;  and  yet  the  names  of  these  5 
two  men  will  fill  a  German  with  a  reverence  and 
enthusiasm  such  as  the  names  of  the  most  gifted 
masters  will  hardly  awaken.  And  why  ?  Because 
they  humanised  knowledge  ;  because  they  broadened 
the  basis  of  life  and  intelligence  ;  because  they  worked  10 
powerfully  to  diffuse  sweetness  and  light,  to  make 
reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail.  With  Saint 
Augustine  they  said  :  "  Let  us  not  leave  thee  alone 
to  make  in  the  secret  of  thy  knowledge,  as  thou  didst 
before  the  creation  of  the  firmament,  the  division  of  15 
light  from  darkness  ;  let  the  children  of  thy  spirit, 
placed  in  their  firmament,  make  their  light  shine  upon 
the  earth,  mark  the  division  of  night  and  day,  and 
announce  the  revolution  of  the  times;  for  the  old 
order  is  passed,  and  the  new  arises  ;  the  night  is  20 
spent,  the  day  is  come  forth  ;  and  thou  shalt  crown 
the  year  with  thy  blessing,  when  thou  shalt  send  forth 
labourers  into  thy  harvest  sown  by  other  hands  than 
theirs;  when  thou  shalt  send  forth  new  labourers  to 
new  seed-times,  whereof  the  harvest  shall  be  not  yet."  25 
— Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed.  1896,  pp.  5-39. 


Ibebrafem  an&  Ifocllentem. 

This  fundamental  ground  is  our  preference  of  doing 
to  thinking.  Now  this  preference  is  a  main  element 
in  our  nature,  and  as  we  study  it  we  find  ourselves 
opening  up  a  number  of  large  questions  on  every  side. 

5  Let  me  go  back  for  a  moment  to  Bishop  Wilson, 
who  says  :  "  First,  never  go  against  the  bes't  light  you 
have  ;  secondly,  take  care  that  your  light  be  not  dark- 
ness." We  show,  as  a  nation,  laudable  energy  and 
persistence  in  walking  according  to  the  best  light  we 

iohave,  but  are' not  quite  careful  enough,  perhaps,  to  see 
that  our  light  be  not  darkness.  This  is  only  another 
version  of  the  old  story  that  energy  is  our  strong 
point  and  favourable  characterijlic^rather  than  intel- 
ligence.     But  we  may  give  to  this  idea  a  more  general 

15  form  still,  in  which  it  will  have  a  yet  larger  range  of 
application.  We  may  regard  this  energy  driving  at 
practice,  this  paramount  sense  of  the  obligation  of 
duty,  self-control,  and  work,  this  earnestness  in  going 
manfully  with  the  best  light  we  have,  as  one  force. 

20  And  we  may  regard  the  intelligence  driving  at  those 
ideas  which  are,  after  all,  the  basis  of  right  practice, 
the  ardent  sense  for  all  the  new  and  changing  com- 
binations of  them  which  man's  development  brings 
with  it,  the  indomitable  impulse  to  know  and  adjust 

25  them  perfectly,  as  another  force.  And  these  two 
forces  we  may  regard  as  in  some  sense  rivals, — rivals 

181 


1 8  2  HEBRA ISM  AND  HELLENISM. 

not  by  the  necessity  of  their  own  nature,  but  as  exhib- 
ited in  man  and  his  history,— and  rivals  dividing  the 
empire   of   the   world  between    them.     And   to   give 
these  forces  names  from  the  two  races  of  men  who 
have  supplied  the  most  signal  and  splendid  manifesta-  5 
tions  of  them,  we  may  call  them  respectively  the  forces 
l  of  Hebraism  and  Hellenism.     Hebraism  and  Hellen- 
/  ism, — between  these  two  points  of  influence  moves  our 
/world.     At   one   time   it   feels   more    powerfully    the 
attraction   of   one    of   them,   at   another  time  of  the  io 
other ;  and  it  ought  to  be,  though  it  never  is,  evenly 
and  happily  balanced  between  them. 

The  final  aim  of  both  Hellenism  and  Hebraism,  as 
of  all  great  spiritual  disciplines,  is  no  doubt  the  same: 
man's  perfection    or   salvation.     The    very   language  15 
which  they  both  of  them  use  in  schooling  us  to  reach 
this  aim  is  often  identical.     Even  when  their  language 
indicates  by  variation, — sometimes  a  broad  variation, 
often  a  but  slight  and  subtle  variation, — the  different 
courses  of  thought  which  are  uppermost  in  each  dis-  20 
cipline,  even  then  the  unity  of  the  final  end  and  aim 
is  still  apparent.     To  employ  the  actual  words  of  that 
discipline  with  which  we  ourselves  are  all  of  us  most 
familiar,   and   the  words   of   which,   therefore,   come 
most  home  to  us,  that  final  end  and  aim  is  "  that  we  25 
might  be  partakers  of  the  divine  nature."     These  are 
the  words  of  a  Hebrew  apostle,  but  of  Hellenism  and 
Hebraism   alike  this  is,   I  say,   the  aim.     When  the 
two  are  confronted,  as  they  very  often  are  confronted, 
it  is  nearly  always  with  what  I  may  call  a  rhetorical  30 
purpose  ;  the  speaker's  whole  design  is  to  exalt  and 
enthrone  one  of  the  two,  and  he  uses  the  other  only  as 


HEBRAISM  AND  HELLENISM.  183 

a  foil  and  to  enable  him  the  better  to  give  effect  to  his 
purpose.  Obviously,  with  us,  it  is  usually  Hellenism 
which  is  thus  reduced  to  minister  to  the  triumph  of 
Hebraism.  There  is  a  sermon  on  Greece  and  the 
5  Greek  spirit  by  a  man  never  to  be  mentioned  without 
interest  and  respect,  Frederick  Robertson,  in  which 
this  rhetorical  use  of  Greece  and  the  Greek  spirit, 
and  the  inadequate  exhibition  of  them  necessarily 
consequent  upon  this,  is  almost  ludicrous,  and  would 

jo  be  censurable  if  it  were  not  to  be  explained  by  the 
exigencies  of  a  sermon.  On  the  other  hand,  Heinrich 
Heine,  and  other  writers  of  his  sort,  give  us  the 
spectacle  of  the  tables  completely  turned,  and  of 
Hebraism  brought  in  just  as  a  foil  and  contrast    to 

15  Hellenism,  and  to  make  the  superiority  of  Hellenism 
more  manifest.  In  both  these  cases  there  is  injustice 
and  misrepresentation.  The  aim  and  end  of  both 
Hebraism  and  Hellenism  is,  as  I  have  said,  one 
and    the  same,  and  this  aim  and  end  is  august  and 

20  admirable. 

Still,  they  pursue  this  aim  by  very  different  courses. 
The  uppermost  idea  with  Hellenism  is  to  see  things  as 
tfiey  really  are  ;  the  uppermost  idea  with  Hebraism 
is  conduct  and  obedience.     Nothing  can  do  away  with 

25  this  ineffaceable  difference.     The  Greek  quarrel  with 
the  body  and  its   desires  is,  that  they  hinder   right 
thinking  ;  the  Hebrew  quarrel  with  them  is,  that  they 
hinder    right    acting.       "He    that   keepeth    the   law,} 
happy  is  he;"  "Blessed  is  the  man  that  feareth  theL 

30  Eternal,  that  delighteth  greatly  in  his  command- 
ments ;" — that  is  the  Hebrew  notion  of  felicity  ;  and, 
pursued  with  passion  and  tenacity,  this  notion  would 


1 84  HEBRAISM  AND   HELLENISM. 

not  let  the  Hebrew  rest  till,  as  is  well  known,  he  had 
at  last  got  out  of  the  law  a  network  of  prescriptions 
to  enwrap  his  whole  life,  to  govern  every  moment  of 
it,  every  impulse,  every  action.     The  Greek  notion  of 
felicity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  perfectly  conveyed  in  5 
these    words    of   a   great   French    moralist  :     C'est  le 
bonheur  des  hommes, — when  ?   when   they  abhor  that 
which  is  evil  ? — no  ;    when   they  exercise  themselves 
in  the   law   of   the  Lord  day  and   night? — no  ;  when 
they  die  daily  ? — no  ;  when  they  walk  about  the  New  10 
Jerusalem  with  palms  in  their  hands  ? — no  ;  but  when 
they   think   aright,    when   their    thought    hits  :    quand 
Us  pensent  juste.     At  the  bottom  of  both   the   Greek 
and  the  Hebrew  notion  is  the  desire,  native  in  man, 
for  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  the  feeling  after  the  15 
universal  order, — in  a  word,  the  love  of  God.     But 
while    Hebraism    seizes    upon    certain    plain,    capital 
intimations  of  the  universal  order,  and  rivets  itself, 
one  may  say,  with  unequalled  grandeur  of  earnestness 
and  intensity  on   the  study  and  observance  of  them,  20 
the  bent  of  Hellenism  is  to  follow,  with  flexible  activ- 
ity,   the    whole    play    of    the    universal    order,  to  be 
apprehensive  of  missing  any  part  of  it,  of  sacrificing 
one  part  to  another,  to  slip  away  from  resting  in  this 
or   that   intimation   of  it,   however   capital.     An    un-  25 
clouded  clearness   of    mind,    an    unimpeded    play  of 
/.  thought,  is  what  this  bent  drives  at.     The  governing    / 
/// idea  of  Hellenism  is  spontaneity  of  consciousness ;  that/ 
*l'   of  Hebraism,  strictness  0/  conscience. 

Christianity  changed  nothing  in  this  essentia;  bent  of  30 
Hebraism  to  set  doing  above  knowing.     Self-conquest, 
self-devotion,   the   following  not  our   own    individual 


HEBRAISM  AND  HELLENISM.  185 

will,  but  the  will  of  God,  obedience,  is  the  fundamental 
idea  of  this  form,  also,  of  the  discipline  to  which  we 
have  attached  the  general  name  of  Hebraism.  Only, 
as  the  old  law  and  the  network  of  prescriptions  with 
5  which  it  enveloped  human  life  were  evidently  a  motive- 
power  not  driving  and  searching  enough  to  produce 
the  result  aimed  at, — patient  continuance  in  well- 
doing, self-conquest, — Christianity  substituted  for 
them  boundless  devotion  to  that  inspiring  and  affect- 

loing  pattern  of  self-conquest  offered  by  Jesus  Christ; 
and  by  the  new  motive-power,  of  which  the  essence 
was  this,  though  the  love  and  admiration  of  Christian 
churches  have  for  centuries  been  employed  in  varying, 
amplifying,  and  adorning  the  plain  description  of  it, 

15  Christianity,  as  St.  Paul  truly  says,  "  establishes  the 
law,"  and  in  the  strength  of  the  ampler  power  which 
she  has  thus  supplied  to  fulfil  it,  has  accomplished  the 
miracles,  which  we  all  see,  of  her  history. 

So  long  as  we  do  not  forget  that  both  Hellenism  and 

20  Hebraism  are  profound  and  admirable  manifestations 
of  man's  life,  tendencies,  and  powers,  and  that  both  of 
them  aim  at  a  like  final  result,  we  can  hardly  insist  too 
strongly  on  the  divergence  of  line  and  of  operation 
with  which  they  proceed.     It  is  a  divergence  so  great 

25  that  it  most  truly,  as  the  prophet  Zechariah  says, 
"  has  raised  up  thy  sons,  O  Zion,  against  thy  sons,  O 
Greece  !  "  The  difference  whether  it  is  by  doing  or 
by  knowing  that  we  set  most  store,  and  the  practical 
consequences  which  follow  from  this  difference,  leave 

30  their  mark  on  all  the  history  of  our  race  and  of  its 
development.  Language  may  be  abundantly  quoted 
from  both   Hellenism  and   Hebraism  to  make  it  seem 


186  HEBRAISM   AND  HELLENISM. 

that  one  follows  the  same  current  as  the  other  towards 
the  same  goal.  They  are,  truly,  borne  towards  the 
same  goal  ;  but  the  currents  which  bear  them  are 
infinitely  different.  It  is  true,  Solomon  will  praise 
knowing  :  "  Understanding  is  a  well-spring  of  life  unto  5 
him  that  hath  it."  And  in  the  New  Testament,  again, 
Jesus  Christ  is  a  "  light,"  and  "  truth  makes  us  free." 
It  is  true,  Aristotle  will  undervalue  knowing  :  "  In 
what  concerns  virtue,"  says  he,  "three  things  are 
necessary — knowledge,  deliberate  will,  and  persever- 10 
ance  ;  but,  whereas  the  two  last  are  all-important,  the 
first  is  a  matter  of  little  importance."  It  is  true  that 
with  the  same  impatience  with  which  St.  James 
enjoins  a  man  to  be  not  a  forgetful  hearer,  but  a  doer 
of  the  work,  Epictetus  exhorts  us  to  do  what  we  have  15 
demonstrated  to  ourselves  we  ought  to  do  ;  or  he 
taunts  us  with  futility,  for  being  armed  at  all  points  to 
prove  that  lying  is  wrong,  yet  all  the  time  continuing 
to  lie.  It  is  true,  Plato,  in  words  which  are  almost  the 
words  of  the  New  Testament  or  the  Imitation,  calls  20 
life  a  learning  to  die.  But  underneath  the  superficial 
agreement  the  fundamental  divergence  still  subsists. 
The  understanding  of  Solomon  is  "  the  walking  in  the 
way  of  the  commandments  ";  this  is  "  the  way  of 
peace,"  and  it  is  of  this  that  blessedness  comes.  In  25 
the  New  Testament,  the  truth  which  gives  us  the 
peace  of  God  and  makes  us  free,  is  the  love  of  Christ 
constraining  us  to  crucify,  as  he  did,  and  with  a  like 
purpose  of  moral  regeneration,  the  flesh  with  its  affec- 
tions and  lusts,  and  thus  establishing  as  we  have  seen,  30 
the  law.  The  moral  virtues,  on  the  other  hand,  are  with 
Aristotle  but  the  porch  and  access  to  the  intellectual, 


HEBRAISM  AND  HELLENISM.  187 

and  with  these  last  is  blessedness.  That  partaking  of 
the  divine  life,  which  both  Hellenism  and  Hebraism, 
as  we  have  said,  fix  as  their  crowning  aim,  Plato 
expressly  denies  to  the  man  of  practical  virtue  merely, 
5  of  self-conquest  with  any  other  motive  than  that  of  per- 
fect intellectual  vision.  He  reserves  it  for  the  lover  of 
pure  knowledge,  as  seeing  things  as  they  really  are,— - 

the  <f>i\ofjLa6tf<;. 

Both    Hellenism    and    Hebraism    arise    out   of   the 

10  wants  of  human  nature,  and  address  themselves  to 
satisfying  those  wants.  But  their  methods  are  so 
different,  they  lay  stress  on  such  different  points, 
and  call  into  being  by  their  respective  disciplines 
such  different  activities,  that  the  face  which  human 

15  nature  presents  when  it  passes  from  the  hands  of 
one  of  them  to  those  of  the  other,  is  no  longer  the 
same.  To  get  rid  of  one's  ignorance,  to  see  things 
as  they  are,  and  by  seeing  them  as  they  are  to  see 
them   in    their  beauty,   is    the  simple    and    attractive 

20  ideal  which  Hellenism  holds  out  before  human 
nature  ;  and  from  the  simplicity  and  charm  of  this 
ideal,  Hellenism,  and  human  life  in  the  hands  of 
Hellenism,  is  invested  with  a  kind  of  aerial  ease, 
clearness,   and    radiancy  ;  they  are   full  of   what  we 

25  call  sweetness  and  light.  Difficulties  are  kept  out 
of  view,  and  the  beauty  and  rationalness  of  the 
ideal  have  all  our  thoughts.  "  The  best  man  is  he 
who  most  tries  to  perfect  himself,  and  the  happiest 
man  is  he  who  most  feels  that  he  is  perfecting  him- 

30  self," — this  account  of  the  matter  by  Socrates,  the 
true  Socrates  of  the  Memorabilia,  has  something  so 
simple,    spontaneous,    and    unsophisticated   about   itv 


1 88  HEBRAISM  AND   HELLENISM. 

that  it  seems  to  fill  us  with  clearness  and  hope  when 
we  hear  it.  But  there  is  a  saying  which  I  have 
heard  attributed  to  Mr.  Carlyle  about  Socrates, — 
a  very  happy  saying,  whether  it  is  really  Mr.  Car- 
lyle's  or  not, — which  excellently  marks  the  essentials 
point  in  which  Hebraism  differs  from  Hellenism. 
"Socrates,"  this  saying  goes,  "is  terribly  at  ease  in 
Zion."  Hebraism, — and  here  is  the  source  of  its 
wonderful  strength, — has  always  been  severely  pre- 
occupied with  an  awful  sense  of  the  impossibility  of  10 
being  at  ease  in  Zion  ;  of  the  difficulties  which  oppose 
themselves  to  man's  pursuit  or  attainment  of  that 
perfection  of  which  Socrates  talks  so  hopefully,  and, 
as  from  this  point  of  view  one  might  almost  say,  so 
glibly.  It  is  all  very  well  to  talk  of  getting  rid  of  15 
one's  ignorance,  of  seeing  things  in  their  reality, 
seeing  them  in  their  beauty  ;  but  how  is  this  to  be 
done  when  there  is  something  which  thwarts  and 
spoils  all  our  efforts  ? 

This  something  is  sin  ;  and   the   space  which  sin  20 
fills   in   Hebraism,   as    compared    with    Hellenism,   is 
indeed   prodigious.     This  obstacle  to  perfection   fills 
the  whole  scene,  and  perfection  appears  remote  and 
rising  away   from   earth,  in  the   background.     Under 
the   name  of  sin,  the  difficulties  of  knowing  oneself  25 
and  conquering  oneself  which  impede  man's  passage 
to  perfection,  become,  for  Hebraism,  a  positive,  active 
entity  hostile    to   man,  a  mysterious  power  which   I 
heard  Dr.  Pusey  the  other  day,  in  one  of  his  impres- 
sive sermons,  compare  to  a  hideous  hunchback  seated  3a 
on  our  shoulders,  and  which  it  is  the  main  business 
of  our  lives  to  hate  and  oppose.     The  discipline  of 


HEBRAISM  AND  HELLENISM.  189 

*= =  -  v  /—  t 

the  Old  Testament  may  be  summed  up  as  a  disci- 
pline teaching  us  to  abhor  and  flee  from  sin  ;  the 
discipline  of  the  New  Testament,  as  a  discipline! 
teaching  us  to  die  to  it.  As  Hellenism  speaks  of 
5  thinking  clearly,  seeing  things  in  their  essence  and 
beauty,  as  a  grand  and  precious  feat  for  man  to 
achieve,  so  Hebraism  speaks  of  becoming  conscious 
of  sin,  of  awakening  to  a  sense  of  sin,  as  a  feat  of 
this  kind.     It   is    obvious    to    what   wide    divergence 

10  these  differing  tendencies,  actively  followed,  must 
lead.  As  one  passes  and  repasses  from  Hellenism  to 
Hebraism,  from  Plato  to  St.  Paul,  one  feels  inclined 
to  rub  one's  eyes  and  ask  oneself  whether  man  is 
indeed  a  gentle  and  simple  being,  showing  the  traces 

15  of  a  noble  and  divine  nature  ;  or  an  unhappy  chained 
captive,  labouring  with  groanings  that  cannot  be  ut- 
tered to  free  himself  from  the  body  of  this  death. 

Apparently    it    was    the    Hellenic    conception    of 
human    nature    which    was    unsound,   for    the    world 

20  could  not  live  by  it.  Absolutely  to  call  it  unsound, 
however,  is  to  fall  into  the  common  error  of  its 
Hebraising  enemies  ;  but  it  was  unsound  at  that 
particular  moment  of  man's  development,  it  was  pre- 
mature.    The    indispensable    basis   of    conduct    and 

25  self-control,  the  platform  upon  which  alone  the  per- 
fection aimed  at  by  Greece  can  come  into  bloom,  was 
not  to  be  reached  by  our  race  so  easily  ;  centuries  of 
probation  and  -discipline  were  needed  to  bring  us  to 
it.     Therefore  the  bright  promise  of  Hellenism  faded, 

30  and  Hebraism  ruled  the  world.  Then  was  seen  that 
astonishing  spectacle,  so  well  marked  by  the  often- 
quoted  words  of  the  prophet  Zechariah,  when  men  of 


19°  HEBRAISM   AND  HELLENISM. 

all  languages  and  nations  took  hold  of  the   skirt  of 
him  that   was  a   Jew,  saying  : — "We  will  go  with  you, 
for  we  have  heard  that  God  is  with  you."     And  the 
Hebraism  which   thus  received  and  ruled  a  world  all 
gone  out  of  the  way  and  altogether  become  unprofit-  S 
able,  was,  and  could  not  but  be,  the  later,  the  more 
spiritual,  the  more  attractive  development  of  Hebra 
ism.     It  was  Christianity  ;   that  is  to   say,  Hebraism 
aiming  at  self-conquest  and  rescue  from  the  thrall  of 
vile  affections,  not  by  obedience  to  the  letter  of  a  law,  ig 
but  by  conformity   to  the  image  of  a  self-sacrificing 
example.     To  a  world  stricken  with  moral  enervation 
Christianity  offered  its  spectacle  of  an   inspired   self- 
sacrifice  ;   to  men  who  refused  themselves  nothing,  it 
showed  one   who   refused   himself  everything; — "wyi5 
Saviour  banished  joy  /"  says  George  Herbert.     When 
the  alma  Venus,  the  life-giving  and  joy-giving  power 
of  nature,  so  fondly  cherished  by  the   Pagan  world, 
could  not  save  her  followers  from   self-dissatisfaction 
and  ennui,  the  severe  words  of  the  apostle  came  brae- 20 
ingly  and  refreshingly  :    "  Let   no   man  deceive  you 
with  vain  words,  for  because  of  these  things  cometh 
the  wrath  of  God  upon  the  children  of  disobedience." 
Through  age  after  age  and  generation  after  genera- 
tion, our  race,  or  all  that  part  of  our   race  which  was  25 
most  living  and  progressive,  was  baptized  into  a  death; 
and  endeavoured,  by  suffering  in   the  flesh,  to  cease 
from  sin.     Of  this  endeavour,  the  animating  labours 
and    afflictions    of    early    Christianity,    the    touching 
asceticism  of  mediaeval  Christianity,  are  the  great  his- 39 
torical    manifestations.     Literary    monuments    of    it, 
each    in    its    own   way  incomparable,   remain   in    the 


HEBRAISM  AND  HELLENISM.  191 

Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  in  St.  Augustine's  Confessions, 
and  in  the  two  original  and  simplest  books  of  the 
Imitation.1 

Of  two  disciplines  laying  their  main  stress,  the 
5  one,  on  clear  intelligence,  the  other,  on  firm  obedi- 
ence ;  the  one,  on  comprehensively  knowing  the 
grounds  of  one's  duty,  the  other,  on  diligently  prac- 
tising it  ;  the  one,  on  taking  all  possible  care  (to  use 
Bishop  Wilson's  words  again)  that  the  light  we  have 

iobe  not  darkness,  the  other,  that  according  to  the 
best  light  we  have  we  diligently  walk, — the  priority 
naturally  belongs  to  that  discipline  which  braces  all 
man's  moral  powers,  and  founds  for  him  an  indis- 
pensable  basis   of   character.     And,    therefore,    it    is 

15  justly  said  of  the  Jewish  people,  who  were  charged 
with  setting  powerfully  forth  that  side  of  the  divine 
order  to  which  the  words  conscience  and  self-conquest 
point,  that  they  were  "entrusted  with  the  oracles  of 
God";   as  it  is  justly  said  of  Christianity,  which  fol- 

20  lowed  Judaism  and  which  set  forth  this  side  with 
a  much  deeper  effectiveness  and  a  much  wider  influ- 
ence, that  the  wisdom  of  the  old  Pagan  world  was 
foolishness  compared  to  it.  No  words  of  devotion 
and  admiration  can  be  too  strong  to  render  thanks  to 

25  these  beneficent  forces  which  have  so  borne  forward 
humanity  in  its  appointed  work  of  coming  to  the 
knowledge  and  possession  of  itself  ;  above  all,  in 
those  great  moments  when  their  action  was  the  whole- 
somest  and  the  most  necessary. 

30     But  the  evolution  of  these  forces,  separately  and  in 
themselves,  is  not  the  whole  evolution  of  humanity, — 
1  The  two  first  books. 


192  HEBRAISM  AND   HELLENISM. 

their  single  history  is  not  the  whole  history  of  man  ; 
whereas  their  admirers  are  always  apt  to  make  it 
stand  for  the  whole  history.  Hebraism  and  Hellenism 
are,  neither  of  them,  the  law  of  human  development, 
as  their  admirers  are  prone  to  make  them  ;  they  are,  5 
each  of  them,  contributions  to  human  deyelopjrien t , — 
august  contributions,  invaluable  contributions  ;  and 
each  showing  itself  to  us  more  august,  more  invaluable, 
more  preponderant  over  the  other,  according  to  the 
moment  in  which  we  take  them  and  the  relation  in  ic 
which  we  stand  to  them.  The  nations  of  our  modern 
world,  children  of  that  immense  and  salutary  move- 
ment which  broke  up  the  Pagan  world,  inevitably 
stand  to  Hellenism  in  a  relation  which  dwarfs  it,  and 
to  Hebraism  in  a  relation  which  magnifies  it.  They  ii> 
are  inevitably  prone  to  take  Hebraism  as  the  law  of 
human  development,  and  not  as  simply  a  contribution 
to  it,  however  precious.  And  yet  the  lesson  must 
perforce  be  learned,  that  the  human  spirit  is  wider 
thah  the  most  priceless  of  the  forces  which  bear  it  20 
onward,  and  that  to  the  whole  development  of  man 
Hebraism  itself  is,  like  Hellenism,  but  a  contribution. 
— Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed.  1896,  pp.  109-121. 


Gbe  Dangers  of  jpudtanfem. 

The  Puritan's  great  danger  is  that  he  imagines 
himself  in  possession  of  a  rule  telling  him  the  unum 
necessarium,  or  one  thing  needful,  and  that  he  then 
remains  satisfied  with  a  very  crude  conception  of  what 
5  this  rule  really  is  and  what  it  tells  him,  thinks  he  has 
now  knowledge  and  henceforth  needs  only  to  act,  and, 
in  this  dangerous  state  of  assurance  and  self-satisfac- 
tion, proceeds  to  give  full  swing  to  a  number  of  the 
instincts  of  his  ordinary  self.     Some  of  the  instincts 

loof  his  ordinary  self  he  has,  by  the  help  of  his  rule  of 
life,  conquered  ;  but  others  which  he  has  not  con- 
quered by  this  help  he  is  so  far  from  perceiving  to 
need  subjugation,  and  to  be  instincts  of  an  inferior 
self,  that  he  even  fancies  it  to  be  his  right  and  duty, 

ib  in  virtue  of  having  conquered  a  limited  part  of  him- 
self, to  give  unchecked  swing  to  the  remainder.  He 
is,  I  say,  a  victim  of  Hebraism,  of  the  tendency  to 
cultivate  strictness  of  conscience  rather  than  spon- 
taneity of  consciousness.     And  what  he   wants  is  a 

20  larger  conception  of  human  nature,  showing  him  the 
number  of  other  points  at  which  his  nature  must 
come  to  its  best,  besides  the  points  which  he  himself 
knows  and  thinks  of.  There  is  no  unum  necessarium, 
or  one  thing  needful,  which  can   free  human  nature 

25  from  the  obligation  of  trying  to  come  to  its  best 
at  all  these   points.     The  real  unum  necessarium  for 

193 


194  THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM. 

us  is  to  come  to  our  best  at  all  points.  Instead  of 
our  "  one  thing  needful,"  justifying  in  us  vulgarity, 
hideousness,  ignorance,  violence, — our  vulgarity, 
hideousness,  ignorance,  violence,  are  really  so  many 
touchstones  which  try  our  one  thing  needful,  and  5 
which  prove  that  in  the  state,  at  any  rate,  in  which 
we  ourselves  have  it,  it  is  not  all  we  want.  And  as 
the  force  which  encourages  us  to  stand  staunch  and 
fast  by  the  rule  and  ground  we  have  is  Hebraism,  so 
the  force  which  encourages  us  to  go  back  upon  this  10 
rule,  and  to  try  the  very  ground  on  which  we  appear 
to  stand,  is  Hellenism, — a  turn  for  giving  our  con- 
sciousness free  play  and  enlarging  its  range.  And 
what  I  say  is,  not  that  Hellenism  is  always  for  every- 
body more  wanted  than  Hebraism,  but  that  for  Mr.  15 
Murphy  at  this  particular  moment,  and  for  the  great 
majority  of  us  his  fellow-countrymen,  it  is  more 
wanted. 

Nothing  is  more  striking  than  to  observe   in  how 
many  ways  a  limited  conception  of  human  nature,  the  20 
notion  of  a  one  thing  needful,  a  one  side  in  us  to  be 
made  uppermost,  the  disregard  of  a  full  and  harmoni- 
ous development  of  ourselves,  tells  injuriously  on  our 
thinking   and    acting.     In    the    first    place,   our  hold 
upon  the  rule  or  standard,  to  which  we  look  for  our  25 
one  thing  needful,  tends  to  become  less  and  less  near 
and   vital,    our   conception    of    it    more    and    more 
mechanical,    and    more    and    more    unlike   the  thing 
itself  as  it  was  conceived  in  the  mind  where  it  origi- 
nated.    The  dealings  of  Puritanism  with  the  writings  3c 
of  St.  Paul,  afford   a  noteworthy  illustration  of  this. 
Nowhere  so  much  as  in  the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  and 


THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM.  195 

in  that  great  apostle's  greatest  work,  the  Epistle  to 
the  Romans,  has  Puritanism  found  what  seemed  to 
furnish  it  with  the  one  thing  needful,  and  to  give  it 
canons  of  truth  absolute  and  final.  Now  all  writings, 
5  as  has  been  already  said,  even  the  most  precious  writ- 
ings and  the  most  fruitful,  must  inevitably,  from  the 
very  nature  of  things,  be  but  contributions  to  human 
thought  and  human  development,  which  extend  wider 
than  they  do.     Indeed,  St.  Paul,  in  the  very  Epistle 

10  of  which  we  are  speaking,  shows,  when  he  asks, 
"  Who  hath  known  the  mind  of  the  Lord  ?  " — who 
hath  known,  that  is,  the  true  and  divine  order  of 
things  in  its  entirety, — that  he  himself  acknowledges 
this    fully.     And    we    have  already    pointed    out    in 

£5  another  Epistle  of  St.  Paul  a  great  and  vital  idea  of 
the  human   spirit, — the  idea  of   immortality, — trans- 
cending and  overlapping,  so  to  speak,  the  expositor's 
power  to  give  it  adequate  definition  and  expression. 
But  quite  distinct   from  the  question   whether  St. 

so  Paul's  expression,  or  any  man's  expression,  can  be  a 
perfect  and  final  expression  of  truth,  comes  the  ques- 
tion whether  we  rightly  seize  and  understand  his 
expression  as  its  exists.  Now,  perfectly  to  seize 
another  man's  meaning,  as  it  stood  in  his  own  mind, 

25  is  not  easy  ;  especially  when  the  man  is  separated 
from  us  by  such  differences  of  race,  training,  time, 
and  circumstances  as  St.  Paul.  But  there  are  degrees 
of  nearness  of  getting  at  a  man's  meaning  ;  and 
though  we  cannot  arrive  quite  at  what  St.  Paul  had 

30  in  his  mind,  yet  we  may  come  near  it.  And  who, 
that  comes  thus  near  it,  must  not  feel  how  terms 
which  St.  Paul  employs,  in  trying  to  follow  with  his 


196  THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM. 

analysis  of  such  profound  power  and  originality  some 
of  the  most  delicate,  intricate,  obscure,  and  contra- 
dictory workings  and  states  of  the  human  spirit,  are 
detached  and  employed  by  Puritanism,  not  in  the 
connected  and  fluid  way  in  which  St.  Paul  employs  5 
them,  and  for  which  alone  words  are  really  meant, 
but  in  an  isolated,  fixed,  mechanical  way,  as  if  they 
were  talismans  ;  and  how  all  trace  and  sense  of  St. 
Paul's  true  movement  of  ideas,  and  sustained  masterly 
analysis,  is  thus  lost  ?  Who,  I  say,  that  has  watched  10 
Puritanism, — the  force  which  so  strongly  Hebraises, 
which  so  takes  St.  Paul's  writings  as  something  abso- 
lute and  final,  containing  the  one  thing  needful, — 
handle  such  terms  as  grace,  faith,  election,  righteous- 
ness, but  must  feel,  not  only  that  these  terms  have  for  15 
the  mind  of  Puritanism  a  sense  false  and  misleading, 
but  also  that  this  sense  is  the  most  monstrous  and 
grotesque  caricature  of  the  sense  of  St.  Paul,  and  that 
his  true  meaning  is  by  these  worshippers  of  his  words 
altogether  lost  ?  20 

Or  to  take  another  eminent  example,  in  which  not 
Puritanism  only,  but,  one  may  say,  the  whole  re- 
ligious world,  by  their  mechanical  use  of  St.  Paul's 
writings,  can  be  shown  to  miss  or  change  his  real 
meaning.  The  whole  religious  world,  one  may  say,  25 
use  now  the  word  resurrection, — a  word  which  is  so 
often  in  their  thoughts  and  on  their  lips,  and  which 
they  find  so  often  in  St.  Paul's  writings, — in  one  sense 
only.  They  use  it  to  mean  a  rising  again  after  the 
physical  death  of  the  body.  Now  it  is  quite  true  30 
that  St.  Paul  speaks  of  resurrection  in  this  sense, 
that  he  tries  to  describe  and  explain  it,  and  that  he 


THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM.  197 

condemns  those  who  doubt  and  deny  it.  But  it  is 
true,  also,  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  where  St. 
Paul  thinks  and  speaks  of  resurrection,  he  thinks  and 
speaks  of  it  in  a  sense  different  from  this  ; — in  the 

5  sense  of  a  rising  to  a  new  life  before  the  physical 
death  of  the  body,  and  not  after  it.  The  idea  on 
which  we  have  already  touched,  the  profound  idea  of 
being  baptized  into  the  death  of  the  great  exemplar 
of  self-devotion   and  self-annulment,  of  repeating  in 

10  our  own  person,  by  virtue  of  identification  with  our 
exemplar,  his  course  of  self-devotion  and  self-annul- 
ment, and  of  thus  coming,  within  the  limits  of  our 
present  life,  to  a  new  life,  in  which,  as  in  the  death 
going  before  it,  we  are  identified  with  our  exemplar, 

15 — this  is  the  fruitful  and  original  conception  of  being 
risen  with  Christ  which  possesses  the  mind  of  St.  Pa 
and  this  is  the  central  point  round  which,  with  such 
incomparable  emotion  and  eloquence,  all  his  teaching 
moves.     For  him,  the  life  after  our  physical  death  is 

20  really  in  the  main  but  a  consequence  and  continuation 
of  the  inexhaustible  energy  of  the  new  life  thus  origi- 
nated on  this  side  the  grave.  This  grand  Pauline 
idea  of  Christian  resurrection  is  worthily  rehearsed  in 
one  of  the  noblest  collects  of  the  Prayer-Book,  and  is 

25  destined,  no  doubt,  to  fill  a  more  and  more  important 
place  in  the  Christianity  of  the  future.  But  mean- 
while, almost  as  signal  as  the  essentialness  of  this 
characteristic  idea  in  St.  Paul's  teaching,  is  the  com- 
pleteness  with   which   the   worshippers  of  St.  Paul's 

30  words  as  an  absolute  final  expression  of  saving  truth 
have  lost  it,  and  have  substituted  for  the  apostle's 
living  and  near  conception  of  a  resurrection  now,  their 


ng 
ul,  ( 

ch  } 


I9«  THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM. 

mechanical  and  remote  conception  of  a  resurrection 
hereafter. 

In  short,  so  fatal  is  the  notion  of  possessing,  even 
in    the    most    precious    words  or   standards,  the  one 
thing  needful,  of  having  in  them,  once  for  all,  a  fulls 
and   sufficient   measure  of  light  to  guide  us,  and  of 
there   being  no  duty  left  for  us   except  to  make  our 
practice  square  exactly  with  them, — so  fatal,  I  say,  is 
this  notion  to  the  right  knowledge  and  comprehension 
of  the  very  words  or  standards  we  thus  adopt,  and  to  ic 
such  strange  distortions  and  perversions  of  them  does 
it  inevitably  lead,  that  whenever  we  hear  that  common- 
place which  Hebraism,  if  we  venture  to  inquire  what 
a  man   knows,  is   so   apt  to  bring  out   against  us,  in 
disparagement  of  what  we  call  culture,  and  in  praise  15 
of    a   man's    sticking    to    the    one  thing  needful, — he 
knows,  says  Hebraism,  his  Bible  ! — whenever  we  hear 
this    said,    we    may,    without    any    elaborate    defence 
of  culture,  content  ourselves  with  answering  simply  : 
"No  man,  who   knows  nothing   else,  knows  even  his  20 
Bible." 

Now  the  force  which  we  have  so  much  neglected, 
Hellenism,  may  be  liable  to  fail  in  moral  strength 
and  earnestness,  but  by  the  law  of  its  nature, — the 
very  same  law  which  makes  it  sometimes  deficient  in  25 
intensity  when  intensity  is  required, — it  opposes 
itself  to  the  notion  of  cutting  our  being  in  two,  of 
attributing  to  one  part  the  dignity  of  dealing  with 
the  one  thing  needful,  and  leaving  the  other  part  to 
take  its  chance,  which  is  the  bane  of  Hebraism.  30 
Essential  in  Hellenism  is  the  impulse  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  whole  man,  to  connecting  and   harmon- 


THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM.  199 

ising  all  parts  of  him,  perfecting  all,  leaving  none  to 
take  their  chance. 

The  characteristic  bent  of  Hellenism,  as  has  been 
said,  is  to  find  the  intelligible  law  of  things,  to  see 

5  them  in  their  true  nature  and  as  they  really  are. 
But  many  things  are  not  seen  in  their  true  nature 
and  as  they  really  are,  unless  they  are  seen  as  beauti- 
ful. Behaviour  is  not  intelligible,  does  not  account 
for  itself  to  the  mind  and   show  the   reason  for  its 

10  existing,  unless  it  is  beautiful.  The  same  with  dis- 
course, the  same  with  song,  the  same  with  worship, 
all  of  them  modes  in  which  man  proves  his  activity 
and  expresses  himself.  To  think  that  when  one  pro- 
duces in  these   what  is  mean,  or  vulgar,  or  hideous, 

15  one  can  be  permitted  to  plead  that  one  has  that 
within  which  passes  show  ;  to  suppose  that  the  pos- 
session of  what  benefits  and  satisfies  one  part  of  our 
being  can  make  allowable  either  discourse  like  Mr. 
Murphy's,  or  poetry  like  the  hymns  we  all   hear,  or 

20  places  of  worship  like  the  chapels  we  all  see, — this  it 
is  abhorrent  to  the  nature  of  Hellenism  to  concede. 
And  to  be,  like  our  honoured  and  justly  honoured 
Faraday,  a  great  natural  philosopher  with  one  side  of 
his  being  and  a  Sandemanian  with  the  other,  would  to 

25  Archimedes  have  been  impossible. 

It  is  evident  to  what  a  many-sided  perfecting  of 
man's  powers  and  activities  this  demand  of  Hellenism 
for  satisfaction  to  be  given  to  the  mind  by  everything 
which  we  do,  is  calculated  to  impel  our  race.     It  has 

30  its  dangers,  as  has  been  fully  granted.  The  notion  of 
this  sort  of  equipollency  in  man's  modes  of  activity 
may  lead  to  moral  relaxation  ;  what  we  do  not  make 


200  THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM. 

our  one  thing  needful,  we  may  come  to  treat  not 
enough  as  if  it  were  needful,  though  it  is  indeed  very 
needful  and  at  the  same  time  very  hard.  Still,  what 
side  in  us  has  not  its  dangers,  and  which  of  our 
impulses  can  be  a  talisman  to  give  us  perfection  out- 5 
right,  and  not  merely  a  help  to  bring  us  towards  it  ? 
Has  not  Hebraism,  as  we  have  shown,  its  dangers  as 
well  as  Hellenism  ?  or  have  we  used  so  excessively 
the  tendencies  in  ourselves  to  which  Hellenism  makes 
appeal,  that  we  are  now  suffering  from  it  ?  Are  we  i< 
not,  on  the  contrary,  now  suffering  because  we  have 
not  enough  used  these  tendencies  as  a  help  towards 
perfection  ? 

For  we    see   whither   it   has   brought   us,  the  long 
exclusive  predominance   of  Hebraism, — the  insisting  15 
on  perfection  in  one  part  of  our  nature  and  not  in  all  ; 
the  singling  out  the  moral  side,  the  side  of  obedience 
and  action,  for  such  intent  regard  ;  making  strictness 
of  the  moral  conscience   so  far  the  principal  thing, 
and   putting  off  for  hereafter  and  for  another  world  20 
the  care  for  being  complete  at  all  points,  the  full  and 
harmonious  development  of  our  humanity.     Instead 
of  watching   and    following  on    its    ways  the    desire 
which,    as    Plato    says,    "  for   ever    through    all    the 
universe  tends   towards    that  which    is    lovely,"   we  25 
think    that   the   world    has  settled  its    accounts  with 
this   desire,  knows  what  this  desire  wants  of  it,  and 
that  all  the  impulses  of  our  ordinary  self  which  do 
not  conflict  with  the  terms  of  this  settlement,  in  our 
narrow   view    of   it,  we    may    follow    unrestrainedly,  30 
under  the  sanction  of  some  such  text  as  "  Not  sloth- 
ful in   business,"  or,  "  Whatsoever  thy  hand   findeth 


THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM.  201 

to  do,  do  it  with  all  thy  might,"  or  something  else  of 
the  same  kind.  And  to  any  of  these  impulses  we 
soon  come  to  give  that  same  character  of  a  mechani- 
cal, absolute  law,  which  we  give  to  our  religion  ;  we 
5  regard  it,  as  we  do  our  religion,  as  an  object  for 
strictness  of  conscience,  not  for  spontaneity  of  con- 
sciousness ;  for  unremitting  adherence  on  its  own 
account,  not  for  going  back  upon,  viewing  in  its  con- 
nection with  other  things,  and  adjusting  to  a  number 

10  of  changing  circumstances.  We  treat  it,  in  short,  just 
as  we  treat  our  religion, — as  machinery.  It  is  in  this 
way  that  the  Barbarians  treat  their  bodily  exercises, 
the  Philistines  their  business,  Mr.  Spurgeon  his  volun- 
taryism, Mr.  Bright  the  assertion  of  personal  liberty, 

15  Mr.  Beales  the  right  of  meeting  in  Hyde  Park.     In  , 
all  those  cases  what  is  needed  is  a  freer  play  of  con- J 
sciousness  upon  the  object  of  pursuit  ;  and  in  all  of  / 
them  Hebraism,  the  valuing  staunchness  and  earnest- 
ness more  than  this  free  play,  the  entire  subordina- 

2otion  of  thinking  to  doing,  has  led  to  a  mistaken  and 
misleading  treatment  of  things. 

The  newspapers  a  short  time  ago  contained  an 
account  of  the  suicide  of  a  Mr.  Smith,  secretary  to 
some  insurance  company,  who,  it  was  said,  "  laboured 

25  under  the  apprehension  that  he  would  come  to  poverty, 
and  that  he  was  eternally  lost."  And  when  I  read 
these  words,  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  poor  man  who 
came  to  such  a  mournful  end  was,  in  truth,  a  kind  of 
type, — by  the   selection  of  his  two  grand  objects  of 

30  concern,  by  their  isolation  from  everything  else,  and 
their  juxtaposition  to  one  another, — of  all  the 
strongest,  most  respectable,  and  most   representative 


202  THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM. 

part  of  our  nation.  "  He  laboured  under  the  appre- 
hension that  he  would  come  to  poverty,  and  that  he 
was  eternally  lost."  The  whole  middle  class  have  a 
conception  of  things, — a  conception  which  makes  us 
call  them  Philistines, — just  like  that  of  this  poor  man  ;  5 
though  we  are  seldom,  of  course,  shocked  by  seeing  it 
take  the  distressing,  violently  morbid,  and  fatal  turn, 
which  it  took  with  him.  But  how  generally,  with  how 
many  of  us,  are  the  main  concerns  of  life  limited  to 
these  two  :  the  concern  for  making  money,  and  the  ia 
concern  for  saving  our  souls  !  And  how  entirely  does 
the  narrow  and  mechanical  conception  of  our  secular 
business  proceed  from  a  narrow  and  mechanical  con- 
ception of  our  religious  business  !  What  havoc  do  the 
united  conceptions  make  of  our  lives  !  It  is  because  15 
the  second-named  of  these  two  master-concerns  pre- 
sents to  us  the  one  thing  needful  in  so  fixed,  nar- 
row, and  mechanical  a  way,  that  so  ignoble  a  fellow 
master-concern  to  it  as  the  first-named  becomes  possi- 
ble ;  and,  having  been  once  admitted,  takes  the  same  20 
rigid  and  absolute  character  as  the  other. 

Poor  Mr.  Smith  had  sincerely  the  nobler  master- 
concern  as  well  as  the  meaner, — the  concern  for  saving 
his  soul  (according  to  the  narrow  and  mechanical  con- 
ception which  Puritanism  has  of  what  the  salvation  25 
of  the  soul  is),  as  well  as  the  concern  for  making 
money.  But  let  us  remark  how  many  people  there 
are,  especially  outside  the  limits  of  the  serious  and 
conscientious  middle  class  to  which  Mr.  Smith  be- 
longed, who  take  up  with  a  meaner  master-concern, —  3a 
whether  it  be  pleasure,  or  field-sports,  or  bodily 
exercises,    or    business,    or   popular    agitation, — who 


THE  DANGERS  OF  PURITANISM.  203 

take  up  with  one  of  these  exclusively,  and  neglect 
Mr.  Smith's  nobler  master-concern,  because  of  the 
mechanical  form  which  Hebraism  has  given  to  this 
noble  master-concern.  Hebraism  makes  it  stand,  as 
5  we  have  said,  as  something  talismanic,  isolated,  and 
all-sufficient,  justifying  our  giving  our  ordinary  selves 
free  play  in  bodily  exercises,  or  business,  or  popular 
agitation,  if  we  have  made  our  accounts  square  with 
this  master-concern  ;  and,  if  we  have   not,  rendering 

10 other  things  indifferent,  and  our  ordinary  self  all  we 
have  to  follow,  and  to  follow  with  all  the  energy  that 
is  in  us,  till  we  do.  Whereas  the  idea  of  perfection 
at  all  points,  the  encouraging  in  ourselves  spontaneity 
of  consciousness,  and  letting  a  free  play  of  thought 

15  live  and  flow  around  all  our  activity,  the  indisposition 
to  allow  one  side  of  our  activity  to  stand  as  so  all- 
important  and  all-sufficing  that  it  makes  other  sides 
indifferent, — this  bent  of  mind  in  us  may  not  only 
check  us  in   following  unreservedly  a  mean   master- 

20 concern  of  any  kind,  but  may  even,  also,  bring  new 
life  and  movement  into  that  side  of  us  with  which 
alone  Hebraism  concerns  itself,  and  awaken  a  healthier 
and  less  mechanical  activity  there.  Hellenism  may 
thus  actually  serve  to  further  the  designs   of  Hebra« 

25  ism. — Culture  and  Anarchy,  ed.  1896,  pp.  134-145. 


Gbe  IRot  Ourselves. 

The  Old  Testament,  nobody  will  ever  deny,  is  filled 
with  the  word  and  thought  of  righteousness.  "  In 
the  way  of  righteousness  is  life,  and  in  the  pathway 
thereof  is  no  death  ;  "  "  Righteousness  tendeth  to 
life  ;  "  "  He  that  pursueth  evil  pursueth  it  to  his  own  5 
death  ;  "  "  The  way  of  transgressors  is  hard  ;  " — 
nobody  will  deny  that  those  texts  may  stand  for  the 
fundamental  and  ever-recurring  idea  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.1 No  people  ever  felt  so  strongly  as  the  people 
of  the  Old  Testament,  the  Hebrew  people,  that  con- 10 
duct  is  three-fourths  of  our  life  and  its  largest  con- 
cern. No  people  ever  felt  so  strongly  that  succeeding, 
going  right,  hitting  the  mark  in  this  great  concern, 
was  the  way  of  peace,  the  highest  possible  satisfaction. 
"  He  that  keepeth  the  law,  happy  is  he  ;  its  ways  are  is 
ways  of  pleasantness,  and  all  its  paths  are  peace  ;  if 
thou  hadst  walked  in  its  ways,  thou  shouldst  have 
dwelt  in  peace  for  ever!"2  Jeshurun,  one  of  the 
ideal  names  of  their  race,  is  the  upright ;  Israel,  the 
other  and  greater,  is  the  wrestler  with  God,  he  who  has  20 
known  the  contention  and  strain  it  costs  to  stand 
upright.  That  mysterious  personage  by  whom  their 
history  first  touches  the  hill  of  Sion,  is  Melchisedek, 
the  righteous  king.     Their  holy  city,  Jerusalem,  is  the 

1  Prov.  xii.  28  ;  xi.  19  ;  xiii.  15. 

1  Prov.  xxix.  18  ;  iii.  17.     Baruch  iii.  13. 

204 


THE  NOT  OURSELVES.  205 

foundation,  or  vision,  or  inheritance,  of  that  which 
righteousness  achieves, — peace.  The  law  of  righteous- 
ness was  such  an  object  of  attention  to  them,  that  its 
words  were  to  "be  in  their  heart,  and  thou  shalt  teach 
5  them  diligently  unto  thy  children,  and  shalt  talk  of 
them  when  thou  sittest  in  thine  house,  and  when  thou 
walkest  by  the  way,  and  when  thou  liest  down,  and 
when  thou  risest  up."  3  That  they  might  keep  them 
ever  in  mind,  they  wore  them,  went  about  with  them, 

10 made  talismans  of  them.  "Bind  them  upon  thy 
fingers,  bind  them  about  thy  neck  ;  write  them  upon 
the  table  of  thine  heart  !  "  4  "  Take  fast  hold  of  her," 
they  said  of  the  doctrine  of  conduct,  or  righteousness, 
"  let  her  not  go  !  keep  her,  for  she  is  thy  life  !  "  5 

15  People  who  thus  spoke  of  righteousness  could  not 
but  have  had  their  minds  long  and  deeply  engaged 
with  it  ;  much  more  than  the  generality  of  mankind, 
who  have  nevertheless,  as  we  saw,  got  as  far  as  the 
notion  of  morals  or  conduct.     And,  if  they  were  so 

20  deeply  attentive  to  it,  one  thing  could  not  fail  to 
strike  them.  It  is  this  :  the  very  great  part  in 
righteousness  which  belongs,  we  may  say,  to  not  our- 
selves. In  the  first  place,  we  did  not  make  ourselves 
and  our  nature,  or  conduct  as   the   object   of   three- 

25  fourths  of  that  nature  ;  we  did  not  provide  that  happi- 
ness should  follow  conduct,  as  it  undeniably  does  ; 
that  the  sense  of  succeeding,  going  right,  hitting  the 
mark,  in  conduct,  should  give  satisfaction,  and  a  very 
high  satisfaction,  just  as  really  as  the  sense  of  doing 

30  well  in  his  work  gives  pleasure  to  a  poet  or  painter,  01 

3  Deuteronomy  vi.  6,  7.  4  Prov.  vii.  3  ;  iii.  3. 

hProv.  iv.  13. 


2c6  THE   NOT  OURSELVES. 

accomplishing  what  he  tries  gives  pleasure  to  a  man 
who  is  learning  to  ride  or  to  shoot  ;  or  as  satisfying 
his  hunger,  also,  gives  pleasure  to  a  man  who  is 
hungry. 

All  this  we  did  not  make  ;  and,  in  the  next  place,  5 
our  dealing  with  it  at  all,  when  it  is  made,  is  not 
wholly,  or  even  nearly  wholly,  in  our  own  power.  Our 
conduct  is  capable,  irrespective  of  what  we  can  our- 
selves certainly  answer  for,  of  almost  infinitely  differ- 
ent degrees  of  force  and  energy  in  the  performance  of  io 
it,  of  lucidity  and  vividness  in  the  perception  of  it,  of 
fulness  in  the  satisfaction  from  it  ;  and  these  degrees 
may  vary  from  day  to  day,  and  quite  incalculably. 
Facilities  and  felicities, — whence  do  they  come? 
suggestions  and  stimulations, — where  do  they  tend?  15 
hardly  a  day  passes  but  we  have  some  experience  of 
them.  And  so  Henry  More  was  led  to  say,  that 
"  there  was  something  about  us  that  knew  better, 
often,  what  we  would  be  at  than  we  ourselves."  For 
instance  :  every  one  can  understand  how  health  and  20 
freedom  from  pain  may  give  energy  for  conduct,  and 
how  a  neuralgia,  suppose,  may  diminish  it.  It  does 
not  depend  on  ourselves,  indeed,  whether  we  have  the 
neuralgia  or  not,  but  we  can  understand  its  impairing 
our  spirit.  But  the  strange  thing  is,  that  with  the  same  25 
neuralgia  we  may  find  ourselves  one  day  without 
spirit  and  energy  for  conduct,  and  another  day  with 
them.  So  that  we  may  most  truly  say  :  "  Left  to 
ourselves,  we  sink  and  perish  ;  visited,  we  lift  up  our 
heads  and  live."       And  we  may  well  give  ourselves,  in  30 

6  "  Relicti    mergimur   et    perimus,   visitati    vero  erigimur    et 
vivimus." 


THE  NOT  OURSELVES.  207 

grateful  and  devout  self-surrender,  to  that  by  which  we 
are  thus  visited.  So  much  is  there  incalculable,  so 
much  that  belongs  to  not  ourselves,  in  conduct  ;  and 
the  more  we  attend  to  conduct,  and  the  more  we  value 
5  it,  the  more  we  shall  feel  this. 

The  not  ourselves,  which  is  in  us  and  in  the  world 
around  us,  has  almost  everywhere,  as  far  as  we  can 
see,  struck  the  minds  of  men  as  they  awoke  to  con- 
sciousness, and  has  inspired  them  with  awe.     Every 

10  one  knows  how  the  mighty  natural  objects  which  most 
took  their  regards  became  the  objects  to  which  this 
awe  addressed  itself.  Our  very  word  God  is  a  remi- 
niscence of  these  times,  when  men  invoked  "  The 
Brilliant  on  high,"  sublime  hoc  candens  quod  invocant 

15  omnes  Jovem,  as  the  power  representing  to  them  that 
which  transcended  the  limits  of  their  narrow  selves, 
and  that  by  which  they  lived  and  moved  and  had  their 
being.  Every  one  knows  of  what  differences  of  opera- 
tion  men's  dealing  with   this  power  has  in  different 

20  places  and  times  shown  itself  capable  ;  how  here  they 
have  been  moved  by  the  ?wt  ourselves  to  a  cruel  terror, 
there  to  a  timid  religiosity,  there  again  to  a  play  of 
imagination  ;  almost  always,  however,  connecting 
with  it,  by  some  string  or  other,  conduct. 

25  But  we  are  not  writing  a  history  of  religion  ;  we  are 
only  tracing  its  effect  on  the  language  of  the  men  from 
whom  we  get  the  Bible.  At  the  time  they  produced 
those  documents  which  give  to  the  Old  Testament  its 
power  and  its  true  character,  the  not  ourselves  which 

30  weighed  upon  the  mind  of  Israel,  and  engaged  its  awe, 
was  the  not  ourselves  by  which  we  get  the  sense  for 
righteousness,  and  whence  we  find  the  help  to  do  right, 


208  THE  NOT  OURSELVES. 

This  conception  was  indubitably  what  lay  at  the  bot- 
tom of  that  remarkable  change  which  under  Moses,  at 
a  certain  stage  of  their  religious  history,  befell  the 
Hebrew  people's  mode  of  naming  God.7  This  was 
what  they  intended  in  that  name,  which  we  wrongly  5 
convey,  either  without  translation,  by  Jehovah,  which 
gives  us  the  notion  of  a  mere  mythological  deity,  or 
by  a  wrong  translation,  Lord,  which  gives  us  the 
notion  of  a  magnified  and  non-natural  man.  The 
name  they  used  was  :    The  Eternal.  10 

Philosophers  dispute  whether  moral  ideas,  as  they 
call  them,  the  simplest  ideas  of  conduct  and  righteous- 
ness which  now  seem  instinctive,  did  not  all  grow, 
were  not  once  inchoate,  embryo,  dubious,  unformed.8 
That  may  have  been  so  ;  the  question  is  an  interesting  15 
one  for  science.  But  the  interesting  question  for  con- 
duct is  whether  those  ideas  are  unformed  or  formed 
now.  They  are  formed  now  ;  and  they  were  formed 
when  the  Hebrews  named  the  power,  out  of  them- 
selves, which  pressed  upon  their  spirit  :  The  Eternal.  20 
Probably  the  life  of  Abraham,  the  friend  of  God,  how- 
ever imperfectly  the  Bible  traditions  by  themselves 
convey  it  to  us,  was  a  decisive  step  forwards  in  the 
development  of  these  ideas  of  righteousness.  Proba- 
bly this  was  the  moment  when  such  ideas  became  25 
fixed  and  ruling  for  the  Hebrew  people,  and  marked  it 
permanently  off  from  all  others  who  had  not  made  the 
same  step.  But  long  before  the  first  beginnings  of 
recorded  history,  long  before  the  oldest  word  of  Bible 

7  See  Exodus  Hi.  14. 

8  "  Qu'est-ce-que  la  nature  ?  "  says  Pascal  :    " peut  eire  une  pre- 
miere coulwne,  comme  la  coutume  est  une  seconde  nature." 


THE  NOT  OURSELVES.  209 

literature,  these  ideas  must  have  been  at  work.  We 
know  it  by  the  result,  although  they  may  have  for  a 
long  while  been  but  rudimentary.  In  Israel's  earliest 
history  and   earliest  literature,  under    the    name    of 

5  Eloah,  Elohim,  The  Mighty,  there  may  have  lain  and 
matured,  there  did  lie  and  mature,  ideas  of  God  more 
as  a  moral  power,  more  as  a  power  connected,  above 
everything,  with  conduct  and  righteousness,  than  were 
entertained  by  other  races.     Not  only  can  we  judge 

10  by  the  result  that  this  must  have  been  so,  but  we  can 
see  that  it  was  so.  Still  their  name,  The  Mighty,  does 
not  in  itself  involve  any  true  and  deep  religious  ideas, 
any  more  than  our  name,  The  Shining.  With  The 
Eternal  it  is  otherwise.     For  what  did  they  mean  by 

15  the  Eternal  ;  the  Eternal  what?  The  Eternal  cause? 
Alas,  these  poor  people  were  not  Archbishops  of  York. 
They  meant  the  Eternal  righteous,  who  loveth  right- 
eousness. They  had  dwelt  upon  the  thought  of 
conduct  and   right   and  wrong,  till  the  not  ourselves 

20  which  is  in  us  and  all  around  us,  became  to  them 
adorable  eminently  and  altogether  as  a  power  which 
makes  for  righteousness  ;  which  makes  for  it  unchange- 
ably and  eternally,  and  is  therefore  called  The 
Eternal. 

25  There  is  not  a  particle  of  metaphysics  in  their  use 
of  this  name,  any  more  than  in  their  conception  of  the 
not  ourselves  to  which  they  attached  it.  Both  came  to 
them  not  from  abstruse  reasoning  but  from  experience, 
and  from  experience  in  the  plain   region   of  conduct. 

30  Theologians  with  metaphysical  heads  render  Israel's 
Eternal  by  the  self -existent,  and  Israel's  not  ourselves 
by  the  absolute,  and  attribute  to  Israel  their  own  sub* 


2io  THE   NOT  OURSELVES. 

tleties.  According  to  them,  Israel  had  his  head  full  of 
the  necessity  of  a  first  cause,  and  therefore  said,  The 
Eternal;  as,  again,  they  imagine  him  looking  out  into 
the  world,  noting  everywhere  the  marks  of  design  and 
adaptation  to  his  wants,  and  reasoning  out  and  infer-  5 
ring  thence  the  fatherhood  of  God.  All  these  fancies 
come  from  an  excessive  turn  for  reasoning,  and  a 
neglect  of  observing  men's  actual  course  of  thinking 
and  way  of  using  words.  Israel,  at  this  stage  when 
The  Eternal  was  revealed  to  him,  inferred  nothing,  ic 
reasoned  out  nothing  ;  he  felt  and  experienced.  When 
he  begins  to  speculate,  in  the  schools  of  Rabbinism, 
he  quickly  shows  how  much  less  native  talent  than  the 
Bishops  of  Winchester  and  Gloucester  he  has  for  this 
perilous  business.  Happily,  when  The  Eternal  was  15 
revealed  to  him,  he  had  not  yet  begun  to  speculate. 

Israel  personified,  indeed,  his  Eternal,  for  he  was 
strongly  moved,  he  was  an  orator  and  poet.  Man 
never  knows  how  anthropomorphic  he  is,  says  Goethe, 
and  so  man  tends  always  to  represent  everything  under  2c 
his  own  figure.  In  poetry  and  eloquence,  man  may 
and  must  follow  this  tendency,  but  in  science  it  often 
leads  him  astray.  Israel,  however,  did  not  scientifi- 
cally predicate  personality  of  God  ;  he  would  not  even 
have  had  a  notion  what  was  meant  by  it.  He  called  25 
him  the  maker  of  all  things,  who  gives  drink  to  all  out 
of  his  pleasures  as  out  of  a  river  ;  but  he  was  led  to 
this  by  no  theory  of  a  first  cause.  The  grandeur  of 
the  spectacle  given  by  the  world,  the  grandeur  of  the 
sense  of  its  all  being  not  ourselves,  being  above  and  30 
beyond  ourselves  and  immeasurably  dwarfing  us,  a 
man  of  imagination  instinctively  personifies  as  a  single, 


THE  NOT  OURSELVES.  211 

mighty,  living  and  productive  power  ;  as  Goethe  tells 
us  that  the  words  which  rose  naturally  to  his  lips,  when 
he  stood  on  the  top  of  the  Brocken,  were :  "Lord, 
what  is  man,  that  thou  mindest  him,  or  the  son  of  man, 
5  that  thou  makest  account  of  him?"9  But  Israel's 
confessing  and  extolling  of  this  power  came  not  even 
from  his  imaginative  feeling,  but  came  first  from  his 
gratitude  for  righteousness.  To  one  who  knows  what 
conduct  is,  it  is  a  joy  to  be  alive  ;  and  the  not  ourselves, 

10  which  by  bringing  forth  for  us  righteousness  makes 
our  happiness,  working  just  in  the  same  sense,  brings 
forth  this  glorious  world  to  be  righteous  in.  That  is 
the  notion  at  the  bottom  of  a  Hebrew's  praise  of  a 
Creator ;    and   if  we   attend,   we  can  see   this    quite 

15  clearly.  Wisdom  and  understanding  mean,  for  Israel, 
the  love  of  order,  of  righteousness.  Righteousness, 
order,  conduct,  is  for  Israel  at  once  the  source  of  all 
man's  happiness,  and  at  the  same  time  the  very  essence 
of  The  Eternal.     The  great  work  of  the  Eternal  is  the 

20  foundation  of  this  order  in  man,  the  implanting  in 
mankind  of  his  own  love  of  righteousness,  his  own 
spirit,  his  own  wisdom  and  understanding  ;  and  it  is 
only  as  a  farther  and  natural  working  of  this  energy 
that  Israel  conceives  the  establishment  of  order  in  the 

25  world,  or  creation.  "  To  depart  from  evil,  that  is  un- 
derstanding !  Happy  is  the  man  that  findeth  wisdom, 
and  the  man  that  getteth  understanding.  The  Eternal 
by  wisdom  hath  founded  the  earth,  by  understanding  hath 
he  established  the  heavens" ;™   and  so  the  Bible-writer 

30  passes  into  the  account  of  creation.  It  all  comes  to 
him  from  the  idea  of  righteousness. 

8  Psalm  cxliv.  3.  10  Prov.  iii.  13-20. 


212  THE   NOT  OURSELVES. 

And  it  is  the  same  with  all  the  language  our 
Hebrew  religionist  uses.  God  is  a  father,  because  the 
power  in  and  around  us,  which  makes  for  righteous- 
ness, is  indeed  best  described  by  the  name  of  this 
authoritative  but  yet  tender  and  protecting  relation.  5 
So,  too,  with  the  intense  fear  and  abhorrence  of 
idolatry.  Conduct,  righteousness,  is,  above  all,  a 
matter  of  inward  motion  and  rule.  No  sensible  forms 
can  represent  it,  or  help  us  to  it  ;  such  attempts  at 
representation  can  only  distract  us  from  it.  So,  too,  10 
with  the  sense  of  the  oneness  of  God.  "  Hear,  O 
Israel  !  The  Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord."  "  People 
think  that  in  this  unity  of  God, — this  monotheistic 
idea,  as  they  call  it, — they  have  certainly  got  meta- 
physics at  last.  They  have  got  nothing  of  the  kind.  15 
The  monotheistic  idea  of  Israel  is  simply  seriousness. 
There  are,  indeed,  many  aspects  of  the  not  ourselves; 
but  Israel  regarded  one  aspect  of  it  only,  that  by 
which  it  makes  for  righteousness.  He  had  the  advan- 
tage, to  be  sure,  that  with  this  aspect  three-fourths  of  20 
human  life  is  concerned.  But  there  are  other  aspects 
which  may  be  set  in  view.  "  Frail  and  striving 
mortality,"  says  the  elder  Pliny  in  a  noble  passage, 
"mindful  of  its  own  weakness,  has  distinguished  these 
aspects  severally,  so  as  for  each  man  to  be  able  to  25 
attach  himself  to  the  divine  by  this  or  that  part, 
according  as  he  has  most  need."  I2  That  is  an  apology 
for  polytheism,  as  answering  to  man's  many-sidedness. 

11  Dent.  vi.  4. 

12  "  Fragilis  et  laboriosa  mortalitas  in  partes  ista  digessit,  infir- 
mitatis  suae  memor,  ut  portionibus  coleret  quisque,  quo  maxime 
indigeret." — Nat.  Hist.  ii.  5. 


THE    NOT  OURSELVES.  213 

But  lsiael  felt  that  being  thus  many-sided  degenerated 
into  an  imaginative  play,  and  bewildered  what  Israel 
recognized  as  our  sole  religious  consciousness, — the 
consciousness  of  right.     "Let  thine  eyelids  look  right 

5  on,  and  let  thine  eyelids  look  straight  before  thee  ; 
turn  not  to  the  right  hand  nor  to  the  left  ;  remove  thy 
foot  from  evil  !  "  1J 

For  does  not  Ovid  say,'4  in  excuse  for  the  immorality 
of  his  verses,  that  the  sight  and  mention  of  the  gods 

10  themselves, — the  rulers  of  human  life, — often  raised 
immoral  thoughts  ?  And  so  the  sight  and  mention  of 
all  aspects  of  the  not  ourselves  must.  Yet  how  tempt- 
ing are  many  of  these  aspects  !  Even  at  this  time  of 
day,  the  grave  authorities  of  the  University  of  Cam- 

15  bridge  are  so  struck  by  one  of  them,  that  of  pleasure, 
life,  and  fecundity, — of  the  hominum  divomque  voluntas, 
alma  Venus, — that  they  set  it  publicly  up  as  an  object 
for  their  scholars  to  fix  their  minds  upon,  and  to 
compose  verses  in  honour  of.     That  is  all  very  well 

20  at  present  ;  but  with  this  natural  bent  in  the  authori- 
ties of  the  University  of  Cambridge,  and  in  the  Indo- 
European  race  to  which  they  belong,  where  would 
they  be  now  if  it  had  not  been  for  Israel,  and  for  the 
stern  check  which    Israel   put  upon  the  glorification 

25  and  divinisation  of  this  natural  bent  of  mankind,  this 
attractive  aspect  of  the  not  ourselves  ?  Perhaps  going  in 
procession,  Vice-Chancellor,  bedels,  masters,  scholars, 

13  Prov.  iv.  25,  27. 

14  Trislia  ii.  287  :— 

"Quis  locus  est  templis  augustior?  haec  quoque  vitet 
In  culpam  si  qua  est  ingeniosa  suam." 

See  the  whole  passage. 


214  THE  NOT  OURSELVES. 

and  all,  in  spite  of  their  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
to  the  Temple  of  Aphrodite  !  Nay,  and  very  likely 
Mr.  Birks  himself,  his  brows  crowned  with  myrtle 
and  scarcely  a  shade  of  melancholy  on  his  countenance, 
would  have  been  going  along  with  them  !  It  is  Israel  5 
and  his  seriousness  that  have  saved  the  authorities  of 
the  University  of  Cambridge  from  carrying  their 
divinisation  of  pleasure  to  these  lengths,  or  from 
making  more  of  it,  indeed,  than  a  mere  passing  intel- 
lectual play  ;  and  even  this  play  Israel  would  have  10 
beheld  with  displeasure,  saying  :  O  turn  away  mine 
eyes  lest  they  behold  vanity,  but  quicken  Thou  me  in  thy 
way  I16  So  earnestly  and  exclusively  were  Israel's 
regards  bent  on  one  aspect  of  the  not  ourselves :  its 
aspect  as  a  power  of  making  for  conduct,  righteous- 15 
ness.  Israel's  Eternal  was  the  Eternal  which  says  : 
"  To  depart  from  evil,  that  is  understanding  !  Be  ye 
holy,  for  I  am  holy  !  "  Now,  as  righteousness  is  but  a 
heightened  conduct,  so  holiness  is  but  a  heightened 
righteousness  ;  a  more  finished,  entire,  and  awe-filled  20 
righteousness.  It  was  such  a  righteousness  which  was 
Israel's  ideal ;  and  therefore  it  was  that  Israel  said, 
not  indeed  what  our  Bibles  make  him  say,  but  this  : 
"  Hear,  O  Israel  !  The  Eternal  is  our  God,  The 
Eternal  alone."  25 

And  in  spite  of  his  turn  for  personification,  his  want 
of  a  clear  boundary-line  between  poetry  and  science, 
his  inaptitude  to  express  even  abstract  notions  by 
other  than  highly  concrete  terms, — in  spite  of  these 
scientific  disadvantages,  or  rather,  perhaps,  because  of  30 
them,  because  he  had  no  talent  for  abstruse  reasoning 

16  Psalm  cxix.  37, 


THE  NOT  OURSELVES.  215 

to  lead  him  astray,— the  spirit  and  tongue  of  Israel 
kept  a  propriety,  a  reserve,  a  sense  of  the  inadequacy 
of  language  in  conveying  man's  ideas  of  God,  which 
contrast  strongly  with   the   licence  of  affirmation  in 

5  our  Western  theology.  "  The  high  and  holy  One 
that  inhabiteth  eternity,  whose  name  is  holy,"16  is  far 
more  proper  and  felicitous  language  than  "  the  moral 
and  intelligent  Governor  of  the  universe,"  just  because 
it  far  less  attempts  to  be  precise,  but  keeps  to  the 

10  language  of  poetry  and  does  not  essay  the  language  of 
science.  As  he  had  developed  his  idea  of  God  from 
personal  experience,  Israel  knew  what  we,  who  have 
developed  our  idea  from  his  words  about  it,  so  often 
are  ignorant    of  :    that   his   words    were   but  thrown 

isoutsit  a  vast  object  of  consciousness,  which  he  could 
not  fully  grasp,  and  which  he  apprehended  clearly  by 
one  point  alone, — that  it  made  for  the  great  concern 
of  life  conduct.  How  little  we  know  of  it  besides,  how 
impenetrable  is  the  course  of  its  ways  with  us,  how  we 

20  ire  baffled  in  our  attempts  to  name  and  describe  it, 
how,  when  we  personify  it  and  call  it  "the  moral  and 
intelligent  Governor  of  the  universe,"  we  presently 
find  it  not  to  be  a  person  as  man  conceives  of  person, 
nor  moral  as  man   conceives  of  moral,  nor  intelligent 

25  as  man  conceives  of  intelligent,  nor  a  governor  as  man 
conceives  of  governors, — all  this,  which  scientific 
theology  loses  sight  of,  Israel,  who  had  but  poetry  and 
eloquence,  and  no  system,  and  who  did  not  mind 
contradicting  himself,  knew.     "  Is  it   any  pleasure  to 

30  the  Almighty,  that   thou  art  righteous  ? "  "     What   a 
blow   to  our  ideal  of  that  magnified  and  non-natural 
15  Isaiah  lvii.  15.  "Job  xxii.  3. 


216  THE  NOT  OURSELVES. 

man,  "the  moral  and  intelligent  Governor!"  Say 
what  we  can  about  God,  say  our  best,  we  have  yet, 
Israel  knew,  to  add  instantly  :  "  Lo,  these  are  parts  of 
his  ways  ;  but  hotv  little  a  portion  is  heard  of  him  !  "  18 
Yes,  indeed,  Israel  remembered  that  far  better  than  5 
our  bishops  do.  "  Canst  thou  by  searching  find  out 
God  ;  canst  thou  find  out  the  perfection  of  the 
Almighty  ?  It  is  more  high  than  heaven,  what  canst 
thou  do?  deeper  than  hell,  what  canst  thou  know  ?  "!9 

Will  it  be  said,  experience  might  also  have  shown  ia 
to  Israel  a  not  ourselves  which  did  not  make  for  his 
happiness,  but  rather  made  against  it,  baffled  his 
claims  to  it  ?  But  no  man,  as  we  have  elsewhere 
remarked,20  who  simply  follows  his  own  consciousness, 
is  aware  of  any  claims,  any  rights,  whatever  ;  what  he  15 
gets  of  good  makes  him  thankful,  what  he  gets  of  ill 
seems  to  him  natural.  His  simple  spontaneous  feeling 
is  well  expressed  by  that  saying  of  Izaak  Walton  : 
"  Every  misery  that  I  miss  is  a  new  mercy,  and  there- 
fore let  us  be  thankful."  It  is  true,  the  not  ourselves  20 
of  which  we  are  thankfully  conscious  we  inevitably 
speak  of  and  speak  to  as  a  man;  for  "man  never 
knows  how  anthropomorphic  he  is."  And  as  time 
proceeds,  imagination  and  reasoning  keep  working 
upon  this  substructure,  and  build  from  it  a  magnified  25 
and  non-natural  man.  Attention  is  then  drawn,  after- 
wards, to  causes  outside  ourselves  which  seem  to  make 
for  sin  and  suffering  ;  and  then  either  these  causes 
have  to  be  reconciled  by  some  highly  ingenious  scheme 
with  the  magnified  and  non-natural  man's  power,  or  a  30 

18  Job  xxvi.  14.  19  Job  xi.  7,  8. 

80  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  165. 


THE  NOT  OURSELVES.  217 

second  magnified  and  non-natural  man  has  to  be  sup- 
posed, who  pulls  the  contrary  way  to  the  first.  So 
arise  Satan  and  his  angels.  But  all  this  is  secondary, 
and  comes  much  later.  Israel,  the  founder  of  our 
5  religion,  did  not  begin  with  this.  He  began  with 
experience.  He  knew  from  thankful  experience  the 
not  ourselves  which  makes  for  righteousness,  and  knew 
how  little  we  know  about  God  besides. — Literature  and 
Dogma,  ed.  1895,  pp.  23-36. 


Iparis  anO  tbe  Senses. 

And  if  Assyria  and  Babylon  seem  too  remote,  let 
us  look  nearer  home  for  testimonies  to  the  inexhaust- 
ible grandeur  and  significance  of  the  Old  Testament 
revelation,  according  to  that  construction  which  we 
here  put  upon  it.  Every  educated  man  loves  Greece,  5 
owes  gratitude  to  Greece.  Greece  was  the  lifter-up 
to  the  nations  of  the  banner  of  art  and  science,  as 
Israel  was  the  lifter-up  of  the  banner  of  righteousness. 
Now,  the  world  cannot  do  without  art  and  science. 
And  the  lifter-up  of  the  banner  of  art  and  science  10 
was  naturally  much  occupied  with  them,  and  conduct 
was  a  homely  plain  matter.  Not  enough  heed,  there- 
fore, was  given  by  him  to  conduct.  But  conduct, 
plain  matter  as  it  is,  is  six-eighths  of  life,  while  art 
and  science  are  only  two-eighths.  And  this  brilliant  15 
Greece  perished  for  lack  of  attention  enough  to 
conduct;  for  want  of  conduct,  steadiness,  character. 
And  there  is  this  difference  between  Greece  and 
Judaea:  both  were  custodians  of  a  revelation,  and 
both  perished  ;  but  Greece  perished  of  tf?vr-fidelity  to  2a 
her  revelation,  and  Judaea  perished  of  ////^/--fidelity  to 
hers.  Nay,  and  the  victorious  revelation  now,  even 
now, — in  this  age  when  more  of  beauty  and  more  of 
knowledge  are  so  much  needed,  and  knowledge,  at 
any  rate,  is  so  highly  esteemed, — the  revelation  which  25 
rules  the  world  even  now,  is  not  Greece's  revelation, 


PARIS  AND    THE    SENSES.  219 

but  Judaea's  ;  not  the  pre-eminence  of  art  and  science, 
but  the  pre-eminence  of  righteousness. 

It  reminds  one  of  what  is  recorded  of  Abraham, 
before  the  true  inheritor  of  the  promises,  the  humble 
5  and  homely  Isaac,  was  born.  Abraham  looked  upon 
the  vigorous,  bold,  brilliant  young  Ishmael,  and  said 
appealingly  to  God:  "Oh  that  Ishmael  might  live 
before  thee  !  "  '  But  it  cannot  be  :  the  promises  are 
to  conduct,  conduct  only.     And  so,  again,  we  in  like 

10  manner  behold,  long  after  Greece  has  perished,  a 
brilliant  successor  of  Greece,  the  Renascence,  present 
herself  with  high  hopes.  The  preachers  of  righteous- 
ness, blunderers  as  they  often  were,  had  for  centuries 
had  it  all  their  own  way.     Art  and  science  had  been 

[5  forgotten,  men's  minds  had  been  enslaved,  their  bodies 
macerated.  But  the  gloomy,  oppressive  dream  is  now 
over.  "  Let  us  return  to  Nature!  "  And  all  the  world 
salutes  with  pride  and  joy  the  Renascence,  and  prays 
to  Heaven:  "  Oh  that  Ishmael  might  live  before  thee  !  " 

no  Surely  the  future  belongs  to  this  brilliant  new-comer, 
with  his  animating  maxim  :  Let  us  return  to  Nature  ! 
Ah,  what  pitfalls  are  in  that  word  Nature  !  Let  us 
return  to  art  and  science,  which  are  a  part  of  Nature  ; 
yes.     Let  us  return  to  a  proper  conception  of  right- 

(85  eousness,  to  a  true  use  of  the  method  and  secret 
of  Jesus,  which  have  been  all  denaturalized;  yes. 
But,  "  Let  us  return  to  Nature  j  " — do  you  mean 
that  we  are  to  give  full  swing  to  our  inclinations,  to 
throw  the  reins  on  the  neck  of  our  senses,  of  those 

30  sirens  whom  Paul  the  Israelite  called  "  the  deceitful 
lusts,"  2  and  of  following  whom  he  said  "  Let  no  man 
1  Genesis  xvii.  18.  '  Eph.  iv.  22. 


220  PARIS  AND    THE   SENSES. 

beguile  you  with  vain  words,  for  because  of  these 
things  cometh  the  wrath  of  God  upon  the  children  of 
disobedience  !  "  3  Do  you  mean  that  conduct  is  not 
three-fourths  of  life,  and  that  the  secret  of  Jesus  has 
no  use  !  And  the  Renascence  did  mean  this,  or  half-  5 
meant  this  ;  so  disgusted  was  it  with  the  cowled  and 
tonsured  Middle  Age.  And  it  died  of  it,  this  brilliant 
Ishmael  died  of  it !  it  died  of  provoking  a  collision 
with  the  homely  Isaac,  righteousness.  On  the  Conti- 
nent came  the  Catholic  reaction  ;  in  England,  as  we  38 
have  said  elsewhere,  "  the  great  middle  class,  the 
kernel  of  the  nation,  entered  the  prison  of  Puritanism, 
and  had  the  key  turned  upon  its  spirit  there  for 
two  hundred  years."  After  too  much  glorification 
of  art,  science,  and  culture,  too  little  ;  after  Rabelais,  15 
George  Fox. 

France,  again,  how  often  and  how  impetuously  for 
France  has  the  prayer  gone  up  to  Heaven  :  "  Oh  that 
Ishmael  might  live  before  thee  !  "     It  is  not  enough 
perceived  what  it  is  which  gives  to  France  her  attrac-  20 
tiveness    for    everybody,    and    her    success,    and    her 
repeated  disasters.     France  is  Vhomtne  sensuel  moyen, 
the  average  sensual  man  ;  Paris  is  the  city  of  Vhotnmc 
sensuel  moyen.     This  has  an  attraction   for  all  of  us. 
We  all  have  in  us  this  homnie  sensuel,  the  man  of  the  25 
"wishes  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  current  thoughts"; 
but  we  develop  him  under  checks  and  doubts,  and 
unsystematically   and  often   grossly.     France,  on  the 
other  hand,  devolops  him  confidently  and   harmoni- 
ously.     She   makes    the   most    of   him,   because   she  30 
knows  what  she  is  about  and  keeps  in  a  mean,  as  her 

3  Eph.  v.  6. 


PARIS  AND    THE   SENSES.  22 1 

climate  is  in  a  mean,  and  her  situation.  She  does  not 
develop  him  with  madness,  into  a  monstrosity,  as  the 
Italy  of  the  Renascence  did;  she  develops  him  equably 
and  systematically.  And  hence  she  does  not  shock 
5  people  with  him  but  attracts  them,  she  names  herself 
the  France  of  tact  and  measure,  good  sense,  logic.  In 
a  way,  this  is  true.  As  she  develops  the  senses,  the 
apparent  self,  all  round,  in  good  faith,  without  misgiv- 
ings, without  violence,  she  has   much  reasonableness 

ioand  clearness  in  all  her  notions  and  arrangements  ;  a 
sort  of  balance  even  in  conduct  ;  as  much  art  and 
science,  and  it  is  not  a  little,  as  goes  with  the  ideal  of 
Vhomme  sensuel  moyen.  And  from  her  ideal  of  the 
average  sensual  man   France  has  deduced  her  famous 

rs  gospel  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  which  she  preaches  with 
such  an  infinite  crowing  and  self-admiration.  France 
takes  "the  wishes  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  current 
thoughts"  for  a  man's  rights;  and  human  happiness, 
and  the  perfection  of  society,  she  places  in  everybody's 

20  being  enabled  to  gratify  these  wishes,  to  get  these 
rights,  as  equally  as  possible  and  as  much  as  possible. 
In  Italy,  as  in  ancient  Greece,  the  satisfying  develop- 
ment of  this  ideal  of  the  average  sensual  man  is  broken 
by  the  imperious  ideal  of  art  and  science  disparaging 

25  it  ;  in  the  Germanic  nations,  by  the  ideal  of  morality 
disparaging  it.  Still,  whenever,  as  often  happens,  the 
pursuers  of  these  higher  ideals  are  a  little  weary  of 
them  or  unsuccessful  with  them,  they  turn  with  a  sort 
of  envy  and  admiration  to  the  ideal  set  up  by  France, 

2o — so  positive,  intelligible,  and  up  to  a  certain  point 
satisfying.  They  are  inclined  to  try  it  instead  of 
their  own,  although  they  can  never  bring  themselves 


2  22  PARIS  AND    THE   SENSES. 

to  try  it  thoroughly,  and  therefore  well.  But  this 
explains  the  great  attraction  France  exercises  upon 
the  world.  All  of  us  feel,  at  some  time  or  other  in 
our  lives,  a  hankering  after  the  French  ideal,  a  dis- 
position to  try  it.  More  particularly  is  this  true  of  5 
the  Latin  nations  ;  and  therefore  everywhere,  among 
these  nations,  you  see  the  old  indigenous  type  of  city 
disappearing,  and  the  type  of  modern  Paris,  the  city 
of  Vhomme  sensuel  moyen,  replacing  it.  La  Boheme,  the 
ideal,  free,  pleasurable  life  of  Paris,  is  a  kind  of  10 
Paradise  of  Ishmaels.  And  all  this  assent  from  every 
quarter,  and  the  clearness  and  apparent  reasonable- 
ness of  their  ideal  besides,  fill  the  French  with  a  kind 
of  ecstatic  faith  in  it,  a  zeal  almost  fanatical  for 
propagating  what  they  call  French  civilisation  every- 15 
where,  for  establishing  its  predominance,  and  their 
own  predominance  along  with  it,  as  of  the  people 
entrusted  with  an  oracle  so  showy  and  taking.  Oh 
that  Ishmael  might  live  before  thee  !  Since  everybody 
has  something  which  conspires  with  this  Ishmael,  his  20 
success,  again  and  again,  seems  to  be  certain.  Again 
and  again  he  seems  drawing  near  to  a  worldwide  suc- 
cess, nay,  to  have  succeeded  ; — but  always,  at  this 
point,  disaster  overtakes  him,  he  signally  breaks 
down.  At  this  crowning  moment,  when  all  seems  25 
triumphant  with  him,  comes  what  the  Bible  calls  a 
crisis,  or  judgment.  Now  is  the  judgment  of  this 
world!  now  shall  the  prince  of  this  world  be  cast  out !  * 
Cast  out  he  is,  and  always  must  be,  because  his  ideal, 
which  is  also  that  of  France  in  general,  however  she  3a 
may  have  noble  spirits  who  contend  against  it  and 

4  John  xii.  31. 


PARIS  AND    THE   SENSES.  223 

seek  a  better,  is  after  all  a  false  one.  Plausible  and 
attractive  as  it  may  be,  the  constitution  of  things 
turns  out  to  be  somehow  or  other  against  it.  And 
why  ?  Because  the  free  development  of  our  senses 
5  all  round,  of  our  appare?it  self,  has  to  undergo  a  pro- 
found modification  from  the  law  of  our  higher  real 
self,  the  law  of  righteousness  ;  because  he,  whose 
ideal  is  the  free  development  of  the  senses  all  round, 
serves   the    senses,    is   a   servant.     But :     The  servant 

10  abideth  ?iot  in  the  house  for  ever  j  the  son  abideth  for 
ever.b 

Is  it  possible  to  imagine  a  grander  testimony  to 
the  truth  of  the  revelation  committed  to  Israel? 
What    miracle    of  making  an  iron  axe-head  float  on 

15  water,  what  successful  prediction  that  a  thing  should 
happen  just  so  many  years  and  months  and  days 
hence,  could  be  really  half  so  impressive  ? — Literature 
and  Dogma,  ed.  1896,  pp.  319-325. 

6  John  viii.  35. 


XLbe  Celt  ano  tbe  teuton. 

Let  me  repeat  what  I  have  often  said  of  the  char« 
acteristics  which  mark  the  English  spirit,  the  English 
genius.  This  spirit,  this  genius,  judged,  to  be  sure, 
rather  from  a  friend's  than  an  enemy's  point  of  view, 
yet  judged  on  the  whole  fairly,  is  characterised,  1 5 
have  repeatedly  said,  by  energy  with  honesty.  Take 
away  some  of  the  energy  which  comes  to  us,  as  I 
believe,  in  part  from  Celtic  and  Roman  sources  ; 
in  steady  of  energy,  say  rather  steadiness;  and  you 
have  the  Germanic  genius  :  steadiness  with  honesty.  10 
,  It  is  evident  how  nearly  the  two  characterisations 
approach  one  another ;  and  yet  they  leave,  as  we 
shall  see,  a  great  deal  of  room  for  difference.  Steadi- 
ness with  honesty;  the  danger  for  a  national  spirit 
thus  composed  is  the  humdrum,  the  plain  and  ugly,  15 
the  ignoble  :  in  a  word,  das  Gemeine,  die  Getneinheit, 
that  curse  of  Germany,  against  which  Goethe  was  all 
his  life  fighting.  The  excellence  of  a  national  spirit 
thus  composed  is  freedom  from  whim,  flightiness, 
perverseness  ;  patient  fidelity  to  Nature, — in  a  word,  20 
science, — leading  it  at  last,  though  slowly,  and  not  by 
the  most  brilliant  road,  out  of  the  bondage  of  the 
humdrum  and  common,  into  the  better  life.  The  uni- 
versal dead-level  of  plainness  and  homeliness,  the 
lack  of  all  beauty  and  distinction  in  form  and  feature,  25 
the  slowness   and   clumsiness   of  the   language,   the 

324 


THE   CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON,  225 

eternal  beer,  sausages,  and  bad  tobacco,  the  blank 
commonness  everywhere,  pressing  at  last  like  a 
weight  on  the  spirits  of  the  traveller  in  Northern 
Germany,  and  making  him  impatient  to  be  gone, — ■ 
5  this  is  the  weak  side  ;  the  industry,  the  well-doing, 
the  patient  steady  elaboration  of  things,  the  idea  of 
science  governing  all  departments  of  human  activity, 
— this  is  the  strong  side  ;  and  through  this  side  of 
her  genius,  Germany  has  already  obtained  excellent 

10  results,  and  is  destined,  we  may  depend  upon  it,  how- 
ever  her  pedantry,  her  slowness,  her  fumbling,  her 
ineffectiveness,  her  bad  government,  may  at  times 
makes  us  cry  out,  to  an  immense  development.1 

For  dulness,  the  creeping  Saxons, — says  an  old  Irish 

15  poem,  assigning  the  characteristics  for  which  different 
nations  are  celebrated  : 

j  For  acuteness  and  valour,  the  Greeks, 
For  excessive  pride,  the  Romans, 
For  dulness,  the  creeping  Saxons  ; 
20  For  beauty  and  amorousness,  the  Gaedhils. 

We  have  seen  in  what  sense,  and  with  what  explana- 
tion, this  characterisation  of  the  German  may  be 
allowed  to  stand;  now  let  us  come.. to  the  beautiful 
and  amorous  GaedhjJL  Or. rather, .let  us  find  a  defini- 
2|  tion  which  may  suit  both  branches  of  the  Celtic 
family,  the  Cymri  aswell  as  the  Gael.  It  is  clear 
that  special  circumstances  may  have  developed  some 
one  side  in  the  national  character  of  Cymri  or  Gael, 
Welshman  or  Irishman,  so  that  the  observer's  notice 

1 1t  is   to  be  remembered  that  the    above   was   written   before 
the  recent  war  between  Prussia  and  Austria. 


226  THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON. 

shall  be  readily  caught  by  this  side,  and  yet  it  may 
be  impossible  to  adopt  it  as  characteristic ol  theCeltic 
nature  generally.  For  instance,  in  his  beautiful  essay 
on  the  poetry  of  the  Celtic  races,  M.  Renan,  with  his 
eyes  fixed  on  the  Bretons  and  the  Welsh,  is  struck  5 
with  the  timidity,  the  shyness,  the  delicacy  of  the 
Celtic  nature,  its  preference  for  a  retired  life,  its 
embarrassment  at  having  to  deal  with  the  great-world. 
He  talks  of  the  douce  petite  race  naturellement  chretienne, 
his  race  fiere  et  timide,  a  Vexte'rieur  gauche  et  evibar-  10 
rass/e.  But  it  is  evident  that  this  description,  however 
well  it  may  do  for  the  Cymri,  will  never  do  for  the 
Gael,  never  do  for  the  typical  Irishman  of  Donny- 
brook  fair.     Again,  M.   Renan's  infinie  d/iicqtesse  de 

I  sentiment  gut  car  act e  rise  la  race  Celtique,  how  little  15 
that  accords  with  the  popular  conception  of  an  Irish- 
man who  wants  to  borrow  money  !  Sentiment  is,  how- 
ever, the  word  which  marks  where  the  Celtic  races 
really  touch  and  are  one  ;  sentimental,  if  the  Celtic 
nature  is  to  be  characterised  by  a  single  term,  is  the  20 
best  term  to  take.  An  organisation  quick  to  feel 
impressions,  and  feeling  them  very  strongly ;  a 
lively  personality  therefore,  keenly  sensitive  to  joy 
and  to  sorrow  ;  this  is  the  main  point.  If  the  downs 
of  life  too  much  outnumber  the  ups,  this  temperament,  25 
just  because  it  is  so  quickly  and  nearly  conscious  of 
all  impressions,  may  no  doubt  be  seen  shy  and 
wounded  ;  it  may  be  seen  in  wistful  regret,  it  may  be 
seen  in  passionate,  penetrating  melancholy  ;. but  its 
essence   is    to    aspire    ardently    after    life,    light,   and  ~w 

ii  emotion,  to  be  expansive,  adventurous,  and  gay.     Our 
'vord  gay,  it   is   said,  is   itself  Celtic.     It  is  not  from 


THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON.  227 

gaudium,   but   from   the    Celtic  gair,.  to   laugh;2    and 
the  impressionable  Celt,  soon  up  and  soon  down,  is 
the  more  down  because  it  is  so  his  nature  to  be  up — 
'j  to  be  sociable,  hospitable,  eloquent,  admired,  figuring 

L  way  brilliantly.  He  loves  bright  colours,  he  easily 
becomes  audacious,  overcrowing,  full  of  fanfaronade. 
The  German,  say  the  physiologists,  has  the  larger 
volume  of  intestines  (and  who  that  has  ever  seen  a 
German  at  a  table-d'hote  will  not  readily  believe  this  ?), 

:othe  Frenchman  has  the  m^re_dcvelnped  organs  of 
respiration.  That- is.  just-the- expansive,  enger -Celtic 
nature  ;  the  head  in  the  air,  s  miffing  and  snortin g  ;  a 
proud  look  and  a  high  sto//jachyJLsAht  Psalmis-Lsays, 
but  without  any  such  settled  savage   temper  as  the 

15  Psalmist  seems  to  impute  by  those  words.  For  good 
and  for  bad,  the  Celtic  genius  is  more  airy  and  unsub- 
stantial, goes  less  near  the  ground,  than  the  German. 
The  Celt  is  often  called  sensual  ;  but  it  is  not  so  much 
the  vulgar  satisfactions  of  sense  that   attract  him  as 

20  emotion  and  excitement;  he  is  truly,  as  I  began  by 
saying,  sentimental. 

Sentimental, — a/ways    ready    to    react    against    the 
despotism   of  fact;    that    is    the   description    a   great 


2  The  etymology  is  Monsieur  Henri  Martin's,  but  Lord  Strang- 
ford  says  : — "  Whatever  gai  may  be,  it  is  assuredly  not  Celtic. 
Is  there  any  authority  for  this  word  gair,  to  laugh,  or  rather 
'laughter,'   beyond    O'Reilly?     O'Reilly    is   no    authority    at   all 

except  in  so  far  as  tested  and  passed  by   the  new  school.      It is 

hard  to  give  up  gavisus. But  Diez^jihief  authority  in  Romanic 

I  matters,  is  content  to  accept  Muratori's  reference  to  an  old  High- 
|  German  gdhi,  modern  jahe,  sharp,  quick,  sudden,  brisk,  and  so 
1  to  the  sense  of_  lively,  animated,  lngli_iu .spirits." 


228  TffE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON. 

friend3  of  the  Celt  gives  of  him  ;  and  it  is  not  a  bad 
description  of  the  sentimental  temperament ;  it  lets 
us  into  the  secret  of  its  dangers  and  of  its  habitual 
want  of  success.  Balance,  measure,  and  patience, 
these  are  the  eternal  conditions,  even  supposing  the  5 
happiest  temperament  to  .start  with,  of  high  success  ; 
and  balance,  measure,  and  patience  are  just  what  the 
Celt  has  never^had.  Even  in  the  world  of  spiritual 
creation,  he  has  never,  in  spite  of  his  admirable  gifts 
of  quick  perception  and  warm  emotion,  succeeded  10 
perfectly,  because  he  never  has  had  steadiness,  pa- 
tience, sanity  enough  to  comply  with  the  conditions 
under  which  alone  can  expression  be  perfectly  given 
to  the  finest  perceptions  and  emotions.  The  Greek 
has  the  same  perceptive,  emotional  temperament,  as  15 
the  Celt  ;  but  he  adds  to  this  temperament _the_sense 
of  measure  ±  hence  his  admirable  success  in  the.  plastic 
arts,  in  which  the  Celtic  genius,  with  its  chafing 
against  the  despotism  of  fact,  its  perpetual   straining 

<  after  mere  emotion,  has  accomplished  nothing.  In  20 
the  comparatively  petty  art  of  ornamentation,  in  rings, 
brooches,  crosiers,  relic-cases,  and  so  on,  he  has  done 
just  enough  to  show  his  delicacy  of  taste,  his  happy 
temperament  ;  but  the  grand  difficulties_o.f__painting 
and  sculpture,  the  prolonged  dealings  of  spirit  with  25 
matter^  he   has   never   had   patience   for.     Take    the 

>  more  spiritual  arts  of  music  and  poetry.  All  that 
emotion  alone  can  do  in  music  the  Celt  has  done  ;  the 
very  soul  of  emotion  breathes  in  the  Scotch  and  Irish 
airs ;  but  with  all  this  power  of  musical  feeling,  what  30 

3  Monsieur  Henri  Martin,  whose   chapters  on  the  Celts,  in  his 
Histoire  de  France,  are  full  of  information  and  interest. 


„ 


THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON.  229 

-has  the  Celt,  so  eager  for  emotion  that  he  has  not 
patience  for  science,  effected  in  music,  to  be  compared 
with  what  the  less  emotional  German,  steadily  develop- 
ing his  nmsii  a!  feeling  with  the  science  of  a  Sebastian 

i  Bac.ljL.oi  a^eetkaver^Jias^efiected  ?  In  poetry,  again, 
— poetry  which  the  Celt  has  so  passionately,  so  nobly 
loved  ;  poetry  where  emotion  counts  for  so  much,  but 
where  reason,  too,  reason,  measure,  sanity,  also  count  for 
so  much, — the  Celt  has  shown  genius,  indeed,  splendid 

10 genius;  but  even  here  his  faults  have  clung  to  him, 
and  hindered  him  from  producing  great  works,  such 
as  other  nations  with  a  genius  for  poetry, — the  Greeks, 
say,  or  the  Italians, — have  produced.  The  Celt  has 
f  not  produced  great  poetical  works,  he  has  only  pro- 
duced poetry  with  an  air  of  greatness  investing  it  all, 
and  sometimes  giving,  moreover,  to  short  pieces,  or  to 
passages,  lines,  and  snatches  of  long  pieces,  singular 
beauty  and  power.  And  yet  he  loved  poetry  so  much 
that  he  grudged  no  pains  to  it  ;  but.  _the-i«ie-art,  the 

20  architectonic^  which   shapes  great  works,  such  as  the 

Agamemnon  or  the  -Divine  Comedy,  comes  only  after  a 

steady,  deep-searching   survey,   a  firm   conception  of 

the   facts  of  human  life,  which  the  Celt  has  not  pa- 

Itierice  for!     So   he   runs   off  into   technic,   where  he 

25  employs  the  utmost  elaboration,  and  attains,  astonish- 
ing skil]  ;  but  in  the  contents  of  his  poetry  you  have 
only  so  much  interpretation  of  the  world  as  the  first 
dash  of  a  quick,  strong  perception,  and  then  sentiment, 
infinite  sentiment,  can  bring  you.     Here,  too,  his  want 

30  of  sanity  and  steadfastness  has  kept  the  Celt  back 
from  the  highest  success. 

If  his  rebellion  against  fact  has  thus  lamed  the  Celt 


230  THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON. 

even  in  spiritual  work,  how  much  more  must  it  have 
lamed  him  in  the  world  of  business  and  politics ! 
The  skilful  and  resolute  appliance  of  means  to  ends 
which  is  needed  both  to  make  progress  in  material 
civilisation,  and  also  to  form  powerful  states,  is  just  5 
what  the  Celt  has  least  turn  for.  He  is  sensual,  as  I 
have  said,  or  at  least  sensuous  ;  loves  bright  colours, 
company,  and  pleasure  ;  and  here  he  is  like  the  Greek 
and  Latin  races  ;  but  compare  the  talent  the  Greek 
and  Latin  (or  Latinised)  races  have  shown  for  gratify- 10 
ing  their  senses,  for  procuring  an  outward  life,  rich, 
luxurious,  splendid,  with  the  Celt's  failure  to  reach 
any  material  civilisation  sound  and  satisfying,  and 
not  out  at  elbows,  poor,  slovenly,  and  half-barbarous. 
The  sensuousness  of  the  Greek  made  Syhaxis  and  15 
Corinth,  the  sensuousness  of _the_Latin  made  Rome 
and  Baiae,  the- .seoisuousn^ss-o-f— the— Latinised  French- 
man  makes  Paris  ;  the  sensuousness  of .  the.  Celt 
proper  has  made  Ireland.  Even  in  his  ideal  heroic 
times,  his  gay  and  sensuous  nature  cannot  carry  him,  20 
in  the  appliances  of  his  favourite  life  of  sociability 
and  pleasure,  beyond  the  gross  and  creeping  Saxon 
whom  he  despises  ;  the  regent  Breas,  we  are  told  in 
the  Battle  of  Moytura  of  the  Foromians,  became  un- 
popular because  "  the  knives  of  his  people  were  not  25 
greased  at  his  table,  nor  did  their  breath  smell  of  ale 
at  the  banquet."  In  its  grossness  and  barbarousness 
is  not  that  Saxon,  as  Saxon  as  it  can  be  ?  just  what 
the  Latinised  Norman,  sensuous  and  sociable  like  the 
Celt,  but  with  the  talent  to  make  this  bent  of  his  30 
serve  to  a  practical  embellishment  of  his  mode  of 
living,  found  so  disgusting  in  the  Saxon. 


THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON. 


231 


And  as  in  material  civilisation  he  has  been  inef- 
fectual, sq  has  the  Celt  been  ineffectual  in  politics. 
This  colossal,  impetuous,  adventurous  wanderer,  the 
Titan  of  the  early  world,  wjlio  in  primitive  times  fills 
;  so  large  a  place  on  earth's  scene,  dwindles  and  dwindles 
as  history  goes  on,  and  at  last  is  shrunk  to  what  we 
now  see  him.  For  ages  and  ages  the  world  has  been 
constantly  slipping,  ever  more  and  more,  out  of  the 
Celt's  grasp.  "  They  went  forth  to  the  war,"  Ossian 
10  says  most  truly,  "  but  they  always  fell." 

And  yet,  if   one  sets   about    constituting  an  ideal 
genius,  what  a  great  deal  of  the   Celt  does  one   find 
oneself   drawn  to    put   into    it  !     Of   an  ideal  genius 
one  jdj3ej5jaoJ_jvant  the  elements,  any  of  them,  to  be 
15  in   a  state  of  weakness  :  on  the  contrary,   one   wants 
alTofjthem  to  be.  inJ.heJiigliesi„slate-af— pawer  ;  but 
with   a  law   of  measure,   of  harmony,  presiding  over 
the  whole.     So  the   sensibility  of   the   Celt,  if  every- 
thing else  were  not  sacrificed  to  it,  is  a  beautiful  and 
20  admirable  force.     For  sensibility,  the  power  of  jjujck 
and   strong  perception   and   emotion,  is   one   of   the 
very  prime  constituents  of  genius,  perhaps  its  most 
positive    constituent  ;    it   is   to    the    soul    what   good 
senses   are  to   the  body,  the  grand   natural  condition 
25  of   successful    activity.     Sensibility    gives   genius   its 
materials  ;  one  cannot  have  too  much  of  it,  if  one  can 
but  keep  its  master  and  not  be  its  slave.     JJo  not  let 
us   wish    that   the   Celt  had  _had  less  sensibiHty  but 
that  _he  had  been  more  master  of  it.     Even  as  it  is, 
30  if  his  sensibility  has  been  a  source  of   weakness   to 
him,  it  has  been  a  source  of  power  too,  and  a  source 
of  happiness.     Some  people  have  found  in  the  Celtic 


2c>2  THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON. 


nature  and  its  sensibility  the  main  root  out  of  which 
chivalry  and  romance  and  the  glorification  of  a  femi- 
nine  ideal    spring  ;    this   is    a    great    question,    with 
which  I  cannot  deal  here.     Let  me  notice  in  passing, 
hj>weyjejyjjiatjhere_isi_in  truth,  a  Cehic  air  about  the  5 
extravagance    of    chivalry,    its   reaction    against    the 
despotism  of  fact,  its  straining  human_naj.ure  further 
than_Lt„wjn_sland.     But  putting  all  this  question  of 
chivalry  and   its    origin   on    one   side,   no    doubt   the 
sensibility  of  the  Celtic  nature,  its  nervous  exaltation,  iq 
have    something   feminine    in    them,  and    the  Celt  is 
thus  peculiarly  disposed  to  feel  the  spell  of  the  femi- 
nine idiosyncrasy  ;  he  has  an   affinity  to  it  ;  he  is  not 
j  far  from  its   secret.     Again,  his  sensibility  givesjiim 
a  peculiarly  near  and  intjmate_fg_eling  of_jiaiLir£-ajid  15 
the  life  of  nature  ;  here,  too,  he  jseems   in  a  special 
way  attracted  by  the   secret  before  hjm_,  the_secret .of 
natural  beauty  and   natural  magic,  and  to  be  close  to 
it.  to  half-divine  it.     In  the  productions  of  the  Celtic 
genius,  nothing,  perhaps,  is  so  interesting  as   the  evi-  20 
dences  of  this  power  :  I   shall  have  occasion   to  give 
specimens  of  them  by  and  by.     The  same  sensibility 
made  the  Celts  full  of  reverence  and   enthusiasm   for 
genius,  learning,  and  the  things  of  the  mind  ;  to_be  a 
bard,  freed  a  man, — that  js  a  characteristic  stroke  of  25 
this  generous  and  ennobling  ardour  of  theirs,  which 
no__race   has   ever  shown   more  strongly.     Even    the 
extravagance    and    exaggeration    of    the    sentimental 
Celtic  nature  has  often  something  romantic  and  attrac- 
tive about  it,  something  which  has  a  sort  of  smack  of  30 
misdirected  good.     The  Celt,  undisciplinable,  anarchi- 
cal,   and   turbulent   by   nature,  but  out   of   affection 


THE    CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON.  233 

and  admiration  giving  himself  body  and  soul  to  some 
leader,  that  is  not  a  promising  political  temperament, 
it  is  just  the  opposite  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  tempera- 
ment, disciplinable  and  steadily  obedient  within  cer- 
5  tain  limits,  but  retaining  an  inalienable  part  of  freedom 
and  self-dependence  ;  but  it  is  a  temperament  for 
which  one  has  a  kind  of  sympathy  notwithstanding. 
I  And  very  often,  for  the  gay  defiant  reaction  against 
fact  of   the  lively  Celtic    nature    one  has  more  than 

10  sympathy  ;  one  feels,  in  spite  of  the  extravagance,  in 
spite  of  good  sense  disapproving,  magnetised  and  ex- 
hilarated   by    it.     The  Gauls  had  a  rule  inflicting  a 
i  fine   on    every    warrior   who,   when    he   appeared    on 
parade,  was  found  to  stick  out  too  much  in  front, — to 

13  be  corpulent,  in  short.  Such  a  rule  is  surely  the 
maddest  article  of  war  ever  framed,  and  to  people  to 
whom  nature  has  assigned  a  large  volume  of  intes- 
tines, must  appear,  no  doubt,  horrible  ;  but  yet  has  it 
not  an   audacious,  sparkling,  immaterial  manner  with 

26  it,  which  lifts  one  out  of  routine,  and  sets  one's  spirits 
in  a  glow  ? 

All  tendencies  of  human  nature  are  in  themselves 
vital  and  profitable  ;  when  they  are  blamed,  they  are 
only   to  be   blamed   relatively,  not  absolutely.     This 

zfe  holds  true  of  the  Saxon's  phlegm  as  well  as  of  the 
Celt's  sentiment.  Out  of  the  steady  humdrum  habit 
of  the  creeping  Saxon,  as  the  Celt  calls  him, — out  of 
his  way  of  going  near  the  ground, — has  come,  no 
doubt,  Philistinism,  that  plant. of  essentially  Germanic 

30 growth,  fl^urishing^ith_its-gejmin£_marks  .only  in  the 
German_fatherland,  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies, 
and  the  United  States  of  America ;  but  what  a  soul 


234  THE   CELT  AND    THE    TEUTON. 

of  goodness  there  is  in  Philistinism  itself  !  and  this 
soul  of  goodness  I,  who  am  often  supposed  to  be 
Philistinism's  mortal  enemy  merely  because  I  do  not 
wish  it  to  have  things  all  its  own  way,  cherish  as 
much  as  anybody.  This  steady-going  habit  leads  at  5 
last,  as  I  have  said,  up  to  science,  up  to  the  compre- 
hension and  interpretation  of  the  world.  With  us  in 
Great  Britain,  it  is  true,  it  does  not  seem  to  lead  so 
far  as  that  ;  it  is  in  Germany,  where  the  habit  is 
more  unmixed,  that  it  can  lead  to  science.  Here  with  10 
us  it  seems  at  a  certain  point  to  meet  with  a  conflict- 
ing force,  which  checks  it  and  prevents  its  pushing  on 
to  science  ;  but  before  reaching  this  point  what  con- 
quests has  it  not  won  !  and  all  the  more,  perhaps,  for 
stopping  short  at  this  point,  for  spending  its  exertions  15 
within  a  bounded  field,  the  field  of  plain  sense,  of 
direct  practical  utility.  How  it  has  augmented  the 
comforts  and  conveniences  of  life  for  us  !  Doors  that 
open,  windows  that  shut,  locks  that  turn,  razors  that 
shave,  coats  that  wear,  watches  that  go,  and  a  thou-  20 
sand  more  such  good  things,  are  the  invention  of  the 
Philistines. — On   the   Study   of   Celtic   Literature,    ed 

l895>  PP-  73~8^ 


Zhe  /IfcoDem  JEngltsbman. 

We,  on  the  other  hand,  do  not  necessarily  gain  by 
the  commixture  of  elements  in  us  ;  we  have  seen  how 
the  clashing  of  natures  in  us  hampers  and  embarrasses 
our  behaviour ;  we  might  very  likely  be  more  at- 
5  tractive,  we  might  very  likely  be  more  successful, 
if  we  were  all  of  apiece.  Our  want  of_  suieness-  of 
taste,  our  eccentricity,  come  in  great  measure, _no 
doubt,  from  our  not  being  all  of  a  piece,  from  pur 
having   no    fixed,    fatal,    spiritual    centre    of   gravity. 

ib  The  Rue  de  Rivoli  is  one  thing,  and  Nuremberg  is 
another,  and  Stonehenge  is  another  ;  but  we  have  a 
turn  for  all  three,  and  lump  them  all  up  together. 
Mr.  Tom  Taylor's  translations  from  Breton  poetry 
offer  a  good  example  of  this  mixing  ;  he  has  a  genuine 

i|5  feeling  for  these  Celtic  matters,  and  often,  as  in  the 
Evil  Tribute  of  Nome/we,  or  in  Lord  Nairn  and  the 
Fairy,  he  is,  both  in  movement  and  expression,  true 
and  appropriate  ;  but  he  has  a  sort  of  Teutonism  and 
Latinism  in  him  too,  and  so  he  cannot  forbear  mixing 

20  with  his  Celtic  strain  such  disparates  as  : — 

"  'Twas  mirk,  mirk  night,  and  the  water  bright 
Troubled  and  drumlie  flowed  " — 

which  is  evidently  Lowland-Scotchy  ;  or  as:— 
"  Foregad,  but  thou'rt  an  artful  hand  ! " 

25  which  is  English-stagey  ;  or  as  : — 

235 


236  THE  MODERN  ENGLISHMAN. 

"  To  Gradlon's  daughter,  bright  of  blee, 
Her  lover  he  whispered  tenderly — 
Bethink  thee,  sweet  Dahut  !  the  key  !  " 

which  is  Anacreontic  in  the  manner  of  Tom  Moore. 
Yes,  it  is  not  a  sheer  advantage_to  have  several  strings  5 
to^  one's  bow  !  if  we  had  been  all  German,  we  might 
have  had  the  science  of  Germany  ;  if  we  had  been  all 
Celtic,  we  might  have  been  popular  and  agreeable  ;  if 
we  had   been  all  Latinised,  we   might  have   governed 
Ireland  as  the  French  govern  Alsace,  without   getting  10 
ourselves   detested.     But   now   we    have    Germanism 
enough    to    make    us    Philistines,    and    Normanism 
enough    to  make  us  imperious,  and  Celtism    enough 
to  make  us  self-conscious  and  awkward  ;  but  German 
fidelity  to  Nature,  and  Latin  precision  and  clear  rea- 15 
son,  and  Celtic  quick-wittedness  and   spirituality,  we 
fall  short   of.     Nay,   perhaps,   if   we   are   doomed  to 
perish  (Heaven  avert  the  omen  !),  we  sJiaHj^erisiL-by 
our   Celtism,   by    our   self-will   and   want   of    patience 
with  ideas,  our-ir ability  tn   SPf>  the  way  the  world  is  20 
going;  and  yet  those  very  Celts,  by  our  affinitywith 
whom  we  are  perishing,  will  be  hating  and  upbraiding 
us  all  the  time. 

This  is  a  somewhat  unpleasant  view  to  take  of  the 
matter  ;  but  if  it  is  true,  its  being  unpleasant  does  not  25 
make  it  any  less  true,  and  we  are  always  the  better 
for  seeing  the  truth.  What  we  here  see  is  not  the 
whole  truth,  however.  So  long  as  this  mixed  consti- 
tution of  our  nature  possesses  us,  we  pay  it  tribute 
and  serve  it ;  so  soon  as  we  possess  it,  it  pays  us  3a 
tribute  and  serves  us.  So  long  as  we  are  blindly  and 
ignorantly  rolled  about  by  the   forces  of  our  nature, 


THE  MODERN  ENGLISHMAN.  237 

tneir  contradiction  baffles  us  and  lames  us  ;  so  soon 
as  we  have  clearly  discerned  what  they  are,  and  begun 
to  apply  to  them  a  law  of  measure,  control,  and  guid- 
ance, they  may  be  made  to  work  for  our  good  and  to 
5  carry  us  forward.  Then  we  may  have  the  good  of 
our  German  part,  the  good  of  our  Latin  part,  the 
good  of  our  Celtic  part  ;  and  instead  of  one  part 
clashing  with  the  other,  we  may  bring  it  in  to  continue 
and  perfect  the  other,  when  the  other  has  given  us 

10  all  the  good  it  can  yield,  and  by  being  pressed  further, 
could  only  give  us  its  faulty  excess.  Then  we  may 
use  the  German  faithfulness  to  Nature  to  give  us 
science,  and  to  free  us  from  insolence  and  self-will  ; 
we  may  use  the  Celtic  quickness  of  perception  to  give 

15  us  delicacy,  and  to  free  us  from  hardness  and  Philis- 
tinism ;  we  may  use  the  Latin  decisiveness_togive  us 
strenuous  clear  method,  and  to  free  us  from  fumbling 
and  idling!  Already,  in  their  untrained  state,  these 
elements  give  signs,  in  our  life  and  literature,  of  their 

20  being  present  in  us,  and  a  kind  of  prophecy  of  what 
they  could  do  for  us  if  they  were  properly  observed, 
trained,  and  applied.  But  this  they  have  not  yet 
been  ;  we  ride  one  force  of  our  nature  to  death  ;  we 
will  be  nothing  but  Anglo-Saxons  in   the  Old   World 

25  or  in  the  New  ;  and  when  our  race  has  built  Bold 
Street,  Liverpool,  and  pronounced  it  very  good,  it 
hurries  across  the  Atlantic,  and  builds  Nashville,  and 
Jacksonville,  and  Milledgeville,  and  thinks  it  is  fulfill- 
ing  the   designs    of   Providence  in  an    incomparable 

30  manner.  But  true  Anglo-Saxons,  simply  and  sincerely 
rooted  in  the  German  nature,  we  are  not  and  cannot 
be  ;  all  we  have  accomplished  by  our  onesideness  is 


238  THE  MODERN  ENGLISHMAN. 

to  blur  and  confuse  the  natural  basis  in  ourselves 
altogether,  and  to  become  something  eccentric,  unat- 
tractive, and  inharmonious. 

A   man    of   exquisite    intelligence     and    charming 
character,  the  late  Mr.  Cobden,  used   to   fancy  that  as 
better  acquaintance  with   the  United   States  was  the 
grand    panacea  for   us  ;    and    once   in    a  speech    he 
bewailed   the  inattention  of  our  seats  of  learning  to 
them,   and    seemed    to    think    that    if    our  ingenuous 
youth  at  Oxford  were  taught  a  little  less  about  the  10 
Ilissus,  and  a  little  more  about  Chicago,  we  should  all 
be  the  better  for  it.     Chicago  has  its  claims  upon  us, 
no  doubt  ;  but    it  is  evident    that  from  the  point  of 
view   to  which  I   have  been   leading,  a  stimulation  of 
our  Anglo-Saxonism,  such  as  is  intended  by  Mr.  Cob-  15 
den's  proposal,  does  not  appear  the  thing  most  need- 
ful for  us  ;  seeing  our  American  brothers  themselves 
have  rather,  like  us,  to  try  and  moderate  the  flame  of 
Anglo-Saxonism,  in  their  own  breasts,  than   to  ask  us 
to  clap  the  bellows  to  it  in  ours.     So  I  am  inclined  to  20 
beseech   Oxford,  instead  of  expiating  her  over-addic- 
tion to  the  Ilissus  by  lectures  on  Chicago,  to  .give  us 
an  expounder  for  a  still  more. remote-looking- object 
than  the  Ilissus, — the  Celtic  languages  and  literature. 
And  yet   why  should   I  call   it   remote  ?  if,  as   I  have  25 
been  labouring  to  show,  in  the  spiritual  frame  of  us 
English  ourselves,  a  Celtic  fibre,  little  as  we  may  have 
ever  thought  of  tracing  it,  lives  and  works.     Aliens  in 
speech,  in  religion,  in  blood !  said  Lord  Lyndhurst  ;  the 
philologists  have  set   him   right  about  the  speech,_the  30 
physiologists  about  the  blood  ;    and   perhaps,  taking 
religion    in    the    wide   but    true    sense    of   our  whole 


„ 


THE   MODERN  ENGLISHMAN.  239 

spiritual  activity,  those  who  have  followed  what  I  have 
been  saying  here  will  think  that  the  Celt  is  not  so 
wholly  alien  to  us  in  religion.  But,  at  any  rate,  let 
us   consider   that    of   tjie_shrunken^_and   diminished 

£  remains   of   this   great    primitive  race,    all,  with    one 

'  insignificant  exception,  belongs  to  the  English  empire  ; 
only  Brittany  is  not  ours  ;  we  have  Ireland  ;  the 
Scotch  Highlands,  Wales,  the  Isle  of  Man,_Cornwall. 
They  are  a  part  of  ourselves,  we  are  deeply  interested 
inl:n_owing_them,  they  are  deeply  interested  in  being 
known  by  us  ;  and  yet  in  the  great  and  rich  univer- 
sities of  this  great  and  rich  country  there  is  no  chair 
of  Celtic,  there  is  no  study  or  teaching  of  Celtic  mat- 
ters ;  those  who  want  them  must  go  abroad  for  them. 

15  It  is  neither  right  nor  reasonable  that  this  should  be 
so.  Ireland  has  had  in  the  last  half  century  a  band 
of  Celtic  students, — a  band  with  which  death,  alas  ! 
has  of  late  been  busy, — from  whence  Oxford  or  Cam- 
bridge might  have  taken  an    admirable  professor  of 

20  Celtic  ;  and  with  the  authority  of  a  university  chair, 
a  great  Celtic  scholar,  on  a  subject  little  known,  and 
where  all  would  have  readily  deferred  to  him,  might 
have  by  this  time  doubled  our  facilities  for  knowing 
the  Celt,  by   procuring  for   this  country  Celtic   docu- 

25  ments,  which  were  inaccessible  here,  and  preventing 
the  dispersion  of  others  which  were  accessible.  .It  is 
not  much  that  the  English  Governmental  oes  for  science 
or  literature  ;  but  if  Eugene  O'Curry,  from  a  chair  of 
Celtic  at'Oxford,  had  appealed  to  the  Government  to 

3b  get  him  copies  or  the  originals  of  the  Celtic  treasures 
in  the  Burgundian  Library  at  Brussels,  or  in  the 
library   of    St.    Isidore's  College   at  Rome,  even  the 


24°  THE  MODERN  ENGLISHMAN. 

English  Government  could  not  well  have  refused  him. 
The  invaluable  Irish  manuscripts  in  the  Stowe  Library 
the  late  Sir  Robert  Peel  proposed,  in  1849,  to  buy  for 
the  British  Museum  ;  Lord  Macaulay,  one  of  the 
trustees  of  the  Museum,  declared,  with  the  confident  5 
shallowness  which  makes  him  so  admired  by  public 
speakers  and  leading-article  writers,  and  so  intolerable 
to  all  searchers  for  truth,  that  he  saw  nothing  in  the 
whole  collection  worth  purchasing  for  the  Museum, 
except  the  correspondence  of  Lord  Melville  on  the  ia 
American  war.  That  is  to  say,  this  correspondence 
of  Lord  Melville's  was  the  only  thing  in  the  collection 
about  which  Lord  Macaulay  himself  knew  or  cared. 
Perhaps  an  Oxford  or  Cambridge  professor  of  Celtic 
might  have  been  allowed  to  make  his  voice  heard,  on  15 
a  matter  of  Celtic  manuscripts,  even  against  Lord 
Macaulay.     The  manuscripts   were   bought   by   Lord 

I  Ashburnham,  who  keeps  them  shut  up,  and  will  let  no 
one  consult  them  (at  least  up  to  the  date  when  O'Curry 
published  his  Lectures  he  did  so)  "  for  fear  an  actual  20 
acquaintance  with  their  contents  should  decrease  their 
value  as  matter  of  curiosity  at  some  future  transfer  or 
sale."  Who  knows?  Perhaps  an  Oxford  professor 
of  Celtic  might  have  touched  the  flinty  heart  of  Lord 
Ashburnham.  25 

At    this   moment,    when    the    narrow    Philistinism, 

I  which  has  long  had  things  its  own  way  in  England, 
is  showing  its  natural  fruits,  and  we  are  beginning  to 
feel  ashamed,  and  uneasy,  and  alarmed  at  it ;  now, 
when  we  are  becoming  aware  that  we  have  sacrificed  30 
to  Philistinism  culture,  and  insight,  and  dignity,  and 
acceptance,  and  weight  among  the  nations,  and  hold 


THE  MODERN  ENGLISHMAN.  241 

on  events  that  deeply  concern  us,  and  control  of  the 
future,  and  yet  that  it  cannot  even  give  us  the  fool's 
paradise  it  promised  us,  but  is  apt  to  break  down,  and 
to  leave  us  with  Mr.  Roebuck's  and  Mr.  Lowe's  lauda- 
;  tions  of  our  matchless  happiness,  and  the  largest  cir- 
culation in  the  world  assured  to  the  Daily  Telegraphy 
for  our  only  comfort  ;  at  such  a  moment  it  needs  some 
moderation  not  to  be  attacking  Philistinism  by  storm, 
but  to  mine  it  through  such  gradual  means  as  the  slow 

10  approaches  of  culture,  and  the  introduction  of  chairs 
of  Celtic.  But  the  hard  unintelligence,  which  is  just 
now  our  bane,  cannot  be  conquered  by  storm  ;  it 
must  be  suppled  and  reduced  by  culture,  by  a  growth 
in  the  variety,  fulness,  and   sweetness  of  our  spiritual 

15  life  ;  and  this  end  can  only  be  reached  by  studying 

things  that   are  outside  of  ourselves,  and  by  studying 

them  disinterestedly.     Let  us  unite  ourselves  with  our 

better  mind    and    with   the    world  through    science ; 

;  and  let  it  be  one  of  our  angelic  revenges  on  the  Phil- 

2oistines,   who    among   their  other  sins  are    the   guilty 

1  authors  of  Fenianism,  to  found  at  Oxford  a  chair  of 

Celtic,  and  to  send,  through   the   gentle  ministration 

\of  science,  a  message  of  peace  to  Ireland. — On  the  Study 

of  Celtic  Literature,  ed.  1895,  pp.  131-137. 


Compulsory  Eoucatfon. 

Grubb  Street,  April  21,  1867. 
Sir:— 

I  take  up  the  thread  of  the  interesting  and  impor- 
tant discussion  on  compulsory  education  between 
Arminius  and  me  where  I  left  it  last  night. 

"But,"  continued  Arminius,  "you  were  talking  of 5 
compulsory    education,    and   your   common    people's 
want    of   it.     Now,  my   dear   friend,   I    want  you  to 
understand  what  this  principle  of  compulsory  educa- 
tion really  means.     It  means  that  to  ensure,  as  far  as 
you  can,  every  man's  being  fit  for  his  business  in  life,  io 
you  put  education  as  a  bar,  or  condition,  between  him 
and  what  he  aims  at.     The  principle  is  just  as  good 
for  one  class  as  another,  and  it  is  only  by  applying  it 
impartially  that  you  save  its  application  from  being 
insolent  and  invidious.     Our  Prussian  peasant  stands  15 
our  compelling  him  to  instruct  himself  before  he  may 
go   about  his  calling,  because  he  sees  we  believe  in 
instruction,  and  compel  our  own  class,  too,  in  a  way 
to  make  it   really  feel  the  pressure,  to  instruct  itself 
before  it  may  go  about  its  calling.     Now,  you  propose  20 
to  make  old  Diggs's  boys  instruct  themselves  before 
they  may  go  bird-scaring  or  sheep-tending.     I  want 
to  know  what  you  do  to  make  those  three  worthies  in 

242 


compulsory  education;  243 

that  justice-room  instruct  themselves  before  they  may 
go  acting  as  magistrates  and  judges."  "Do?"  said 
I ;  "why,  just  look  what  they  have  done  all  of  them- 
selves. Lumpington  and  Hittall  have  had  a  public- 
5  school  and  university  education;  Bottles  has  had  Dr. 
Silverpump's,  and  the  practical  training  of  business. 
What  on  earth  would  you  have  us  make  them  do 
more  ?  "  "  Qualify  themselves  for  administrative  or 
judicial   functions,   if  they  exercise   them,"  said  Ar- 

iominius.  "  That  is  what  really  answers,  in  their  case, 
to  the  compulsion  you  propose  to  apply  to  Diggs's 
boys.  Sending  Lord  Lumpington  and  Mr.  Hittall  to 
school  is  nothing;  the  natural  course  of  things  takes 
them  there.     Don't  suppose  that,  by  doing  this,  you 

15  are  applying  the  principle  of  compulsory  education 
fairly,  and  as  you  apply  it  to  Diggs's  boys.  You  are 
not  interposing,  for  the  rich,  education  as  a  bar  or 
condition  between  them  and  that  which  they  aim  at. 
But  interpose  it,  as  we  do,  between  the  rich  and  things 

20  they  aim  at,  and  I  will  say  something  to  you.  I 
should  like  to  know  what  has  made  Lord  Lumpington 
a  magistrate  ?  "  "  Made  Lord  Lumpington  a  magis- 
trate ?  "  said  I;  "  why,  the  Lumpington  estate,  to  be 
sure."      "And    the    Reverend    Esau    Hittall?"  con- 

25  tinued  Arminius.  "  Why,  the  Lumpington  living,  of 
course,"  said  I.  "  And  that  man  Bottles  ?  "  he  went  on. 
"  His  English  energy  and  self-reliance,"  I  answered 
very  stiffly,  for  Arminius's  incessant  carping  began 
to  put  me  in  a  huff ;  "  those  same  incomparable  and 

30  truly  British  qualities  which  have  just  triumphed  over 
every  obstacle  and  given  us  the  Atlantic  telegraph  ! — 
and  let  me  tell  you,  Von  T.,  in  my  opinion  it  will  be 


244  COMPULSORY  EDUCATION. 

a 'long  time  before  the  '  Geist '  of  any  pedant  of  a 
Prussian  professor  gives  us  anything  half  so  valuable 
as  that."  "  Pshaw  !  "  replied  Arminius,  contemptu- 
ously; "  that  great  rope,  with  a  Philistine  at  each  end 
of  it  talking  inutilities!  5 

"  But  in  my  country,"  he  went  on,  "we  should  have 
begun  to  put  a  pressure  on  these  future  magistrates  at 
school.  Before  we  allowed  Lord  Lumpington  and 
Mr.  Hittall  to  go  to  the  university  at  all,  we  should 
have  examined  them,  and  we  should  not  have  trusted  10 
the  keepers  of  that  absurd  cockpit  you  took  me  down 
to  see,  to  examine  them  as  they  chose,  and  send  them 
jogging  comfortably  off  to  the  university  on  their 
lame  Jongs  and  shorts.  No;  there  would  have  been 
some  Mr.  Grote  as  School  Board  Commissary,  pitch- 15 
ing  into  them  questions  about  history,  and  some  Mr. 
Lowe,  as  Crown  Patronage  Commissary,  pitching  into 
them  questions  about  English  literature;  and  these 
young  men  would  have  been  kept  from  the  university, 
as  Diggs's  boys  are  kept  from  their  bird-scaring,  till  20 
they  instructed  themselves.  Then,  if,  after  three 
years  of  their  university,  they  wanted  to  be  magis- 
trates, another  pressure  ! — a  great  Civil  Service  exam- 
ination before  a  board  of  experts,  an  examination  in 
English  law,  Roman  law,   English  history,  history  of  25 

jurisprudence "     "  A  most  abominable  liberty  to 

take  with  Lumpington  and  Hittall  !  "  exclaimed  I. 
"  Then  your  compulsory  education  is  a  most  abomi- 
nable liberty  to  take  with  Diggs's  boys,"  retorted  Ar- 
minius. "  But,  good  gracious  !  my  dear  Arminius,"  30 
expostulated  I,  "  do  you  really  mean  to  maintain  that 
a  man  can't  put  old  Diggs  in  quod  for  snaring  a  hare 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION.  245 

without  all  this  elaborate  apparatus  of  Roman  law  and 
history  of  jurisprudence  ?  "  "  And  do  you  really  mean 
to  maintain,"  returned  Arminius,  "  that  a  man  can't 
go  bird-scaring  or  sheep-tending  without  all  this  elab- 
5  orate  apparatus  of  a  compulsory  school  ?  "  "  Oh, 
but,"  I  answered,  "  to  live  at  all,  even  at  the  lowest 
stage  of  human  life,  a  man  needs  instruction."  "  Well," 
returned  Arminius,  "and  to  administer  at  all,  even  at 
the  lowest  stage  of  public  administration,  a  man  needs 

10  instruction."     "  We  have  never  found  it  so,"  said  I. 

Arminius   shrugged   his  shoulders  and   was  silent. 

By  this  time  the  proceedings  in  the  justice-room  were 

drawn  to  an  end,  the  majesty  of  the  law  had  been 

vindicated  against  old  Diggs,  and  the  magistrates  were 

15  coming  out.  I  never  saw  a  finer  spectacle  than  my 
friend  Arminius  presented,  as  he  stood  by  to  gaze  on 
the  august  trio  as  they  passed.  His  pilot-coat  was 
tightly  buttoned  round  his  stout  form,  his  light  blue 
eye  shone,  his  sanguine  cheeks  were  ruddier  than  ever 

20  with  the  cold  morning  and  the  excitement  of  dis- 
course, his  fell  of  tow  was  blown  about  by  the  March 
wind,  and  volumes  of  tobacco-smoke  issued  from  his 
lips.  So  in  old  days  stood,  I  imagine,  his  great  name- 
sake by  the  banks  of  the  Lippe,  glaring  on  the  Roman 

25  legions  before  their  destruction. 

Lord  Lumpington  was  the  first  who  came  out.     His 

lordship  good-naturedly  recognised  me   with  a  nod, 

and  then  eyeing  Arminius  with  surprise  and  curiosity: 

'  Whom  on  earth  have  you  got  there  ?  "  he  whispered. 

30"  A  very  distinguished  young  Prussian  savant,"  replied 
I;  and  then  dropping  my  voice,  in  my  most  impressive 
undertones  I  added:  "  And  a  young  man  of  very  good 


246  COMPULSORY  EDUCATION. 

family,  besides,  my  lord."  Lord  Lumpington  looked 
at  Arminius  again;  smiled,  shook  his  head,  and  then, 
turning  away,  and  half  aloud:  "  Can't  compliment  you 
on  your  friend,"  says  he. 

As  for  that  centaur  Hittall,  who  thinks  on  nothings 
on  earth  but  field-sports,  and  in  the  performance  of 
his   sacred  duties   never   warms   up  except  when   he 
lights  on  some  passage  about  hunting  or  fowling,  he 
always,  whenever  he  meets  me,  remembers  that  in  my 
unregenerate    days,   before   Arminius    inoculated    me  io 
with  a  passion  for  intellect,  I  was  rather  fond  of  shoot- 
ing, and  not  quite   such  a  successful  shot  as  Hittall 
himself.     So,    the   moment  he  catches  sight   of  me: 
"How    d'ye  do,  old  fellow?"  he  blurts  out;  "well, 
been  shooting  any  straighter  this  year  than  you  used  15 
to,  eh  ?  " 

I  turned  from  him  in  pity,  and  then  I  noticed 
Arminius,  who  had  unluckily  heard  Lord  Lumping- 
ton's  unfavourable  comment  on  him,  absolutely  purple 
with  rage  and  blowing  like  a  turkey-cock.  "Never  20 
mind,  Arminius,"  said  I  soothingly;  "  run  after 
Lumpington,  and  ask  him  the  square  root  of  thirty- 
six."  But  now  it  was  my  turn  to  be  a  little  annoyed, 
for  at  the  same  instant  Mr.  Bottles  stepped  into  his 
brougham,  which  was  waiting  for  him,  and  observing  25 
Arminius,  his  old  enemy  of  the  Reigate  train,  he  took 
no  notice  whatever  of  me  who  stood  there,  with  my 
hat  in  my  hand,  practising  all  the  airs  and  graces  I 
have  learnt  on  the  Continent;  but,  with  that  want  of 
amenity  I  so  often  have  to  deplore  in  my  countrymen,  3a 
he  pulled  up  the  glass  on  our  side  with  a  grunt  and  a 
jerk,  and  drove  off  like  the  wind,  leaving  Arminius  in 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION.  -2\1 

a  very  bad  temper  indeed,  and  me,  I  confess,  a  good 
deal  shocked  and  mortified. 

However,  both  Arminius  and  I  got  over  it,  and  have 
now  returned  to  London,  where  I  hope  we  shall  before 
5  long  have  another  good  talk  about  educational  mat- 
ters. Whatever  Arminius  may  say,  I  am  still  for 
going  straight,  with  all  our  heart  and  soul,  at  compul- 
sory education  for  the  lower  orders.  Why,  good 
heavens  !  Sir,  with  our  present  squeezable  Ministry, 

ioweare  evidently  drifting  fast  to  household  suffrage, 
pure  and  simple  ;  and  I  observe,  moreover,  a  Jacob- 
inical spirit  growing  up  in  some  quarters  which  gives 
me  more  alarm  than  even  household  suffrage.  My 
elevated  position  in  Grub  Street,  Sir,  where  I  sit  cora- 

15  mercing  with  the  stars,  commands  a  view  of  a  certain 
spacious  and  secluded  back  yard  ;  and  in  that  back 
yard,  Sir,  I  tell  you  confidentially  that  I  saw  the  other 
day  with  my  own  eyes  that  powerful  young  publicist, 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  in  full  evening  costume,  fur- 

sobishingup  a  guillotine.  These  things  are  very  seri- 
ous ;  and  I  say,  if  the  masses  are  to  have  power,  let 
them  be  instructed,  and  don't  swamp  with  ignorance 
and  unreason  the  education  and  intelligence  which 
now  bear  rule  amongst  us.    For  my  part,  when  I  think 

25  of  Lumpington's  estate,  family,  and  connections  when 
I  think  of  Hittall's  shooting,  and  of  the  energy  and 
self-reliance  of  Bottles,  and  when  I  see  the  unex- 
ampled pitch  of  splendour  and  security  to  which  these 
have  conducted  us,  I  am  bent,  I  own,  on  trying  to 

30  make  the  new  elements  of  our  political  system 
worthy  of  the  old  ;  and  I  say  kindly,  but  firmly,  to 
the  compound  householder  in  the  French  poet's  beau- 


248  COMPULSORY  EDUCATION. 

tiful  words,1  slightly  altered:     "Be  Great,  O  working 
class,  for  the  middle  and  upper  class  are  great !  " 
I  am,  Sir, 

Your  humble  servant, 

Matthew  Arnold.      5 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 


(From  the  autumn  of  this  year  (1867)  dates  one  01 
the  most  painful  memories  of  my  life.  I  have  men- 
tioned in  the  last  letter  but  one  how  in  the  spring  I 
was  commencing  the  study  of  German  philosophy  10 
with  Arminius.  In  the  autumn  of  that  year  the  cele- 
brated young  Comtist,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  resent- 
ing some  supposed  irreverence  of  mine  towards  his 
master,  permitted  himself,  in  a  squib,  brilliant  indeed, 
but  unjustifiably  severe,  to  make  game  of  my  inapti-  15 
tude  for  philosophical  pursuits.  It  was  on  this  occa- 
sion he  launched  the  damning  sentence:  "  We  seek 
vainly  in  Mr.  A.  a  system  of  philosophy  with  prin- 
ciples coherent,  interdependent,  subordinate,  and 
derivative."  The  blow  came  at  an  unlucky  moment  20 
for  me.  I  was  studying,  as  I  have  said,  German  phi- 
losophy with  Arminius  ;  we  were  then  engaged  on 
Hegel's  "  Phenomenology  of  Geist"  and  it  was  my 
habit  to  develop  to  Arminius,  at  great  length,  my  views 
of  the  meaning  of  his  great  but  difficult  countryman.  25 
One  morning  I  had,  perhaps,  been  a  little  fuller  than 
usual  over  a  very  profound  chapter.  Arminius  was 
suffering  from   dyspepsia   (brought   on,  as  I  believe, 


«.  •< 


Et  tachez  d'etre  grand,  car  le  peuple  grandit." 


COMPULSORY  EDUCATION.  249 

by  incessant  smoking);  his  temper,  always  irritable, 
seemed  suddenly  to  burst  from  all  control, — he  flung 
the  Phdnomenologie  to  the  other  end  of  the  room,  ex- 
claiming :  "That  smart  young  fellow  is  quite  right  ! 
5  it  is  impossible  to  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a  sow's 
ear  !  ''  This  led  to  a  rupture,  in  which  I  think  I  may 
fairly  say  that  the  chief  blame  was  not  on  my  side. 
But  two  invaluable  years  were  thus  lost  ;  Arminius 
abandoned  me  for  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  who  must 

10  certainly  have  many  memoranda  of  his  later  conver- 
sations, but  has  never  given  them,  as  I  always  did  mine 
of  his  earlier  ones,  to  the  world.  A  melancholy  occa- 
sion brought  Arminius  and  me  together  again  in 
1869;  the  sparkling  pen  of  my  friend  Leo  has  luckily 

15  preserved  the  record  of  what  then  passed.) — Ed. 
Friendship's  Garland,  ed.  1896,  pp.  266-273. 


**  Xffe  a  Dream ! " 

Versailles,  November  26,  1870. 
Mon  Cher, — 

An  event  has  just  happened  which  I  confess  frankly 
will  afflict  others  more  than  it  does  me,  but  which  you 
ought  to  be  informed  of. 

Early  this  morning  I  was  passing  between  Rueil  and  5 
Bougival,   opposite   Mont  Valerien.     How   came  I  in 
that  place  at  that  hour  ?     Mon  c/ier,  forgive  my  folly  ! 
You  have  read  Romeo  and  Juliet,  you  have  seen  me  at 
Cremorne,  and  though  Mars  has  just  now  this  belle 
France  in  his  gripe,  yet  you  remember,  I  hope,  enough  10 
of  your  classics  to  know  that,  where  Mars  is,  Venus  is 
never  very  far  off.     Early  this  morning,  then,  I  was  be- 
tween Rueil  and  Bougival,  with  Mont  Valerien  in  grim 
proximity.     On  a  bank  by  a  poplar-tree  at  the  road- 
side,  I   saw  a  knot  of  German  soldiers,  gathered  evi- 15 
dently    round    a   wounded    man.     I   approached  and 
frankly    tendered    my    help,   in  the  name   of   British 
humanity.     What   answer  I   may  have  got  I  do  not 
know  ;  for,  petrified  with  astonishment,   I  recognised 
in   the  wounded  man   our  familiar  acquaintance,  Ar- 20 
minius  von  Thunder-ten-Tronckh.    A  Prussian  helmet 
was  stuck  on  his  head,  but  there  was  the  old  hassock 
of  whity-brown  hair, — there  was  the  old  square  face, — 

250 


"LIFE  A    DREAM!"  251 

there  was  the  old  blue  pilot  coat  !  He  was  shot 
through  the  chest,  and  evidently  near  his  end.  He 
had  been  on  outpost  duty  ; — the  night  had  been  quiet, 
but  a  few  random  shots  had  been  fired.  One  of  these 
5  had  struck  Arminius  in  the  breast,  and  gone  right 
through  his  body.  By  this  stray  bullet,  without  glory, 
without  a  battle,  without  even  a  foe  in  sight,  had 
fallen  the  last  of  the  Von  Thunder-ten-Tronckhs  ! 
He  knew  me,  and  with  a  nod,  "  Ah,"  said  he,  "  the 

10  rowdy  Philistine  !  "  You  know  his  turn,  outre  in  my 
opinion,  for  flinging  nicknames  right  and  left.  The 
present,  however,  was  not  a  moment  for  resentment. 
The  Germans  saw  that  their  comrade  was  in  friendly 
hands,   and  gladly   left   him  with   me.     He  had  evi- 

15  dently  but  a  few  minutes  to  live.  I  sate  down  on  the 
bank  by  him,  and  asked  him  if  I  could  do  anything  to 
relieve  him.  He  shook  his  head.  Any  message  to  his 
friends  in  England  ?  He  nodded.  I  ran  over  the 
most  prominent   names  which  occurred  to  me  of  the 

20  old  set.  First,  our  Amphitryon,  Mr.  Bottles.  "  Say  to 
Bottles  from  me,"  said  Arminius  coldly,  "  that  I  hope 
he  will  be  comfortable  with  his  dead  wife's  sister." 
Next,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison.  "Tell  him,"  says 
Arminius,  "  to  do  more  in  literature, — he  has  a  talent 

25  for  it  ;  and  to  avoid  Carlylese  as  he  would  the  devil." 
Then  I  mentioned  a  personage  to  whom  Arminius  had 
taken  a  great  fancy  last  spring,  and  of  whose  witty 
writings  some  people  had,  absurdly  enough,  given  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold    the    credit, — Azamat-Batuk.     Both 

30  writers  are  simple  ;  but  Azamat's  is  the  simplicity  of 
shrewdness,  the  other's  of  helplessness.  At  hearing 
the  clever  Turk's   name,  "  Tell   him  only,"  whispers 


252  "LIFE  A    DREAM.'" 

Arminius,  "when  he  writes  about  the  sex,  not  to  show 
such  a  turn  for  sailing  so  very  near  the  wind  ! " 
Lastly,  I  mentioned  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold.  I  hope  I 
rate  this  poor  soul's  feeble  and  rambling  performances 
at  their  proper  value  ;  but  I  am  bound  to  say  that  at  5 
the  mention  of  his  name  Arminius  showed  signs  of 
tenderness.  "  Poor  fellow  !  "  sighed  he  ;  "  he  had  a 
soft  head,  but  I  valued  his  heart.  Tell  him  I  leave 
him  my  ideas, — the  easier  ones  ;  and  advise  him  from 
me,"  he  added,  with  a  faint  smile,  "  to  let  his  Dissen- 10 
ters  go  to  the  devil  their  own  way  !  " 

At  this  instant  there  was  a  movement  on  the  road  at 
a  little  distance  from  where  we  were, — some  of  the 
Prussian  Princes,  I  believe,  passing  ;  at  any  rate,  we 
heard  the  honest  German  soldiers  Hoch-ing,  hur-  15 
rahing,  and  God-blessing,  in  their  true-hearted  but 
somewhat  rococo  manner.  A  flush  passed  over  Von 
Thunder-ten-Tronckh's  face.  "  God  bless  Germany" 
he  murmured,  "  and  confound  all  her  kings  and 
princelings  !"  These  were  his  last  coherent  words.  20 
His  eyes  closed  and  he  seemed  to  become  uncon- 
scious. I  stooped  over  him  and  inquired  if  he  had 
any  wishes  about  his  interment.  "  Pangloss — Mr. 
Lowe — mausoleum — Caterham,"  was  all  that,  in 
broken  words,  I  could  gather  from  him.  His  breath  25 
came  with  more  and  more  difficulty,  his  fingers  felt 
instinctively  for  his  tobacco-pouch,  his  lips  twitched  ; 
■ — he  was  gone. 

So  died,  mon  cher,  an  arrant  Republican,   and,  to 
speak   my  real   mind,   a  most  unpleasant  companion.  30 
His  great  name  and  lineage  imposed   on   the   Bottles 
family,  and  authors  who  had  never  succeeded  with  the 


"LIFE  A   DREAM!"  253 

British  public  took  pleasure  in  his  disparaging  criti- 
cisms on  our  free  and  noble  country;  but  for  my  part 
I  always  thought  him  an  overrated  man. 

Meanwhile  I  was  alone  with  his  remains.  His 
5  notion  of  their  being  transported  to  Caterham  was  of 
course  impracticable.  Still,  I  did  not  like  to  leave  an 
old  acquaintance  to  the  crows,  and  I  looked  round  in 
perplexity.  Fortune  in  the  most  unexpected  manner 
befriended  me.     The   grounds  of  a  handsome   villa 

10  came  down  to  the  road  close  to  where  I  was  ;  at  the 
end  of  the  grounds  and  overhanging  the  road  was 
a  summer-house.  Its  shutters  had  been  closed  when 
I  first  discovered  Arminius;  but  while  I  was  occupied 
with   him   they  had   been  opened,  and  a  gay  trio  was 

15  visible  within  the  summer-house  at  breakfast.  I  could 
scarcely  believe  my  eyes  for  satisfaction.  Three  Eng- 
lish members  of  Parliament,  celebrated  for  their 
ardent  charity  and  advanced  Liberalism,  were  sitting 
before   me   adorned  with   a  red  cross   and   eating  a 

2oStrasburg  pie  !  I  approached  them  and  requested 
their  aid  to  bury  Arminius.  My  request  seemed  to 
occasion  them  painful  embarrassment  ;  they  muttered 
something  about  "  a  breach  of  the  understanding," 
and   went  on  with  their  breakfast.     I  insisted,  how- 

25  ever  ;  and  at  length,  having  stipulated  that  what  they 
were  about  to  do  should  on  no  account  be  drawn  into 
a  precedent,  they  left  their  breakfast,  and  together  we 
buried  Arminius  under  the  poplar-tree.  It  was  a 
hurried  business,   for   my  friends  had  an  engagement 

30  to  lunch  at  Versailles  at  noon.  Poor  Von  Thunder- 
ten-Tronckh,  the  earth  lies  light  on  him,  indeed!  I 
could  see,  as  I  left  him,  the  blue  of  his  pilot  coat  and 


254  "LIFE  A    DREAM!" 

the  whity-brown  of  his  hair  through  the  mould  we  had 
scattered  over  him. 

My  benevolent  helpers  and  I  then  made  our  way 
together  to  Versailles.  As  I  parted  from  them  at  the 
Hotel  des  Reservoirs  I  met  Sala.  Little  as  I  liked  5 
Arminius,  the  melancholy  scene  I  had  just  gone 
through  had  shaken  me,  and  I  needed  sympathy.  I 
told  Sala  what  had  happened.  "  The  old  story," 
says  Sala;  "  life  a  dream  !  Take  a  glass  of  brandy." 
He  then  inquired  who  my  friends  were.  "  Three  ia 
admirable  members  of  Parliament,"  I  cried,  "who, 
donning  the  cross  of  charity "  "I  know,"  inter- 
rupted Sala  ;  "  the  cleverest  thing  out  !  " 

But    the  emotions  of   this    agitating  day  were  not 
yet    over.     While    Sala   was   speaking,   a    group    had  15 
formed  before  the  hotel  near  us,  and    our  attention 
was  drawn  to  its  central  figure.     Dr.  Russell,  of  the 
Times,  was  preparing  to  mount  his  war-horse.     You 
know  the  sort  of  thing, — he  has  described  it  himself 
over  and  over  again.     Bismarck  at  his  horse's  head,  20 
the  Crown   Prince   holding    his    stirrup,  and  the  old 
King   of    Prussia    hoisting    Russell    into    the    saddle. 
When  he  was  there,  the  distinguished  public  servant 
waved  his  hand  in  acknowledgment,  and  rode  slowly 
down   the  street  accompanied  by  the  gamins  of  Ver-25 
sailles,  who  even  in  their  present  dejection  could  not 
forbear  a   few  involuntary  cries  of   "Quel  ho  mine  J '" 
Always   unassuming,   he  alighted   at  the   lodgings  of 
the  Grand    Duke  of    Oldenburg,  a  potentate  of    the 
second  or  even  the  third  order,  who  had  beckoned  to  30 
him  from  the  window. 

The  agitation  of   this  scene  for  me,  however  (may 


"LIFE  A   DREAM!"  255 

I  not  add,  mon  c/ier,  for  you  also,  and  for  the  whole 
British  press  ?),  lay  in  a  suggestion  which  it  called 
forth  from  Sala.  "  It  is  all  very  well,"  said  Sala, 
"  but  old  Russell's   guns   are   getting  a  little  honey- 

5  combed  ;  anybody  can  perceive  that.  He  will  have 
to  be  pensioned  off,  and  why  should  you  not  succeed 
him  ?  "  We  passed  the  afternoon  in  talking  the  thing 
over,  and  I  think  I  may  assure  you  that  a  train  has 
been  laid  of  which  you  will  see  the  effects  shortly. 

10  For  my  part,  I  can  afford  to  wait  till  the  pear  is 
ripe  ;  yet  I  cannot,  without  a  thrill  of  excitement, 
think  of  inoculating  the  respectable  but  somewhat 
ponderous  Times  and  its  readers  with  the  divine 
madness  of  our  new  style, — the  style  we  have  formed 

15  upon  Sala.  The  world,  mon  cher,  knows  that  man 
but  imperfectly.  I  do  not  class  him  with  the  great 
masters  of  human  thought  and  human  literature, 
— Plato,  Shakspeare,  Confucius,  Charles  Dickens. 
Sala,  like  us  his  disciples,  has  studied  in  the  book  of 

20  the  world  even  more  than  in  the  world  of  books. 
But  his  career  and  genius  have  given  him  somehow 
the  secret  of  a  literary  mixture  novel  and  fascinating 
in  the  last  degree  :  he  blends  the  airy  epicureanism 
of  the  salons  of  Augustus  with  the  full-bodied  gaiety 

25  of  our  English  Cider-cellar.  With  our  people  and 
country,  mon  cher,  this  mixture,  you  may  rely  upon 
it,  is  now  the  very  thing  to  go  down  ;  there  arises 
every  day  a  larger  public  for  it  ;  and  we,  Sala's 
disciples,  may  be  trusted  not  willingly  to  let  it  die. — 

50  Tout  a  vous,  A  Young  Lion.1 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 
1 1  am  bound  to  say  that  in  attempting  to  verify  Leo's  graphic 


256  "LIFE  A    DREAM!" 

(I  have  thought  that  the  memorial  raised  to 
Arminius  would  not  be  complete  without  the  follow- 
ing essay,  in  which,  though  his  name  is  not  actually 
mentioned,  he  will  be  at  once  recognised  as  the  lead- 
ing spirit  of  the  foreigners  whose  conversation  is  5 
quoted. 

Much  as  I  owe  to  his  intellect,  I  cannot  help  some- 
times regretting  that  the  spirit  of  youthful  paradox 
which  led  me  originally  to  question  the  perfections 
of  my  countrymen,  should  have  been,  as  it  were,  10 
prevented  from  dying  out  by  my  meeting,  six  years 
ago,  with  Arminius.  The  Saturday  Review,  in  an 
article  called  "  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  and  his  Country- 
men," had  taken  my  correction  in  hand,  and  I  was 
in  a  fair  way  of  amendment,  when  the  intervention  15 
of  Arminius  stopped  the  cure,  and  turned  me,  as  has 
been  often  said,  into  a  mere  mouthpiece  of  this 
dogmatic  young  Prussian.  It  was  not  that  I  did 
not  often  dislike  his  spirit  and  boldly  stand  up  to 
him  ;  but,  on  the  whole,  my  intellect  was  (there  is  20 

description  of  Dr.  Russell's  mounting  on  horseback,  from  the 
latter's  own  excellent  correspondence,  to  which  Leo  refers  us,  I 
have  been  unsuccessful.  Repeatedly  I  have  seemed  to  be  on 
the  trace  of  what  my  friend  meant,  but  the  particular  descrip- 
tion he  alludes  to  I  have  never  been  lucky  enough  to  light  25 
upon. 

I  may  add  that,  in  spite  of  what  Leo  says  of  the  train  he  and 
Mr.  Sala  have  laid,  of  Dr.  Russell's  approaching  retirement,  of 
Leo's  prospect  of  succeeding  him,  of  the  charm  of  the  leonine 
style,  and  of  the  disposition  of  the  public  mind  to  be  fascinated  30 
by  it, — I  cannot  myself  believe  that  either  the  public,  or  the 
proprietors  of  the  Times,  are  yet  ripe  for  a  change  so  revolu- 
tionary.    But  Leo  was  always  sanguine. — Ed. 


"LIFE   A   DREAM  I"  257 

no  use  denying  it)  overmatched  by  his.  The  follow- 
ing essay,  which  appeared  at  the  beginning  of  1866, 
was  the  first  proof  of  this  fatal  predominance,' 
which  has  in  many  ways  cost  me  so  dear.)— Ed. 
5  Friendship's  Garland,  ed.  1896.  pp.  309-316. 


JiS(Xj      Our* topic    at    this    moment   Is   the   influence   of 

■^j^tX Religious  establishments  on  culture  ;  and  it  is  remark- 

/v^m^  able  that  Mr.  Bright,  who  has  taken  lately  to  repre- 

J  *-se*iting   himself  as,  above  all,   a  promoter  of  reason 

ana  of  the   simple  natural    truth  of    things,  and    hiss 

| policy  as  a  fostering  of  the  growth  of  intelligence, — 

*¥*&#£_,  just  the  aims,  as  is  well  known,  of  culture  also, — Mr. 

[^Ij^^Biight,  in  a  speech  at  Birmingham  about  education, 

■^mjyJ  seized  on  the  very  point  which  seems  to  concern  our 

U-    -     Jtopic,  when   he  said  :  "  I  believe  the  people  of  the  10 

United    States    have    offered    to    the    world    more 

'valuable  information  during  the  last  forty  years,  than 

all    Europe    put    together."      So .  America,    without 

eligious    establishments,  seems    to    get    ahead  of   us 

all,  even  in  light  and  the  things  of  the  mind.  15 

On  the  other  hand,  another  friend  of  reason  and 
the  simple  natural  truth  of  things,  M.  Renan,  says  of 
America,  in  a  book  he  has  recently  published,  what 
seems  to  conflict  violently  with  what  Mr.  Bright  says. 
Mr.  Bright  avers  that  not  only  have  the  United  States  20 
thus  informed  Europe,  but  they  have  done  it  without 
a  great  apparatus  of  higher  and  scientific  instruction 
and  by  dint  of  all  classes  in  America  being  "  suffi- 
ciently educated  to  be  able  to  read,  and  to  compre- 
hend, and  to  think;  and  that,  I  maintain,  is  the  25 
foundation   of  all   subsequent   progress."     And  then 

458 


AMERICA.  259 

comes  M.  Renan,  and  says  :  "  The  sound  instruction 
of  the  people  is  an  effect  of  the  high  culture  of  certain  /+ 
classes.  The  count/  ies  which,  like  the  United  States, 
have  created  a  considerable  popular  instruction  without 
5  any  serious  higher  instruction,  will  long  have  to  expiate 
this  fault  by  their  intellectual  mediocrity,  their  vulgarity 
of  manners,  their  superficial  spirit \  their  lack  of  general 
intelligence."  x  y^Ji  dUu^tku^f0  &  C^ctcX  &I«-*~^ 
Now,  which  of  these  two  friends  of  light  are  we<4io  -u/^ixf_i 

10 believe?     M.   Renan    seems    more    to    have    in    view^fcL^cLa  £j 
what    we   ourselves  mean    by  culture  ;   because    Mn  1 

Bright  always  has  in  his  eye  what  he  calls  "  a  com-  «  . 
mendable  interest"  in  politics  and  in  political  agita^    ^Hi^ 
tions.     As  he  "said  only  the  other  day  at  Birminhham  M»^  QJft 

15  "  At    this    moment, — in    fact,    I    may    say    at    every/  'W-o. 
moment    in    the  history  of  a  free  country, — there  is^ 
nothing  that  is  so  much  worth  discussing  as  politics."* 
And  he  keeps  repeating,  with  all  the  powers  of  his 
noble  oratory,  the  old  story,  how  to  the  thoughtful- 

2oness  and  intelligence  of  the  people  of  great  towns  we 
owe  all  our  improvements  in  the  last  thirty  years,  and 
how  these  improvements  have  hitherto  consisted  in 
Parliamentary  reform,  and  free  trade,  and  abolition 
of  Church  rates,  and  so  on  ;  and  how  they  are  now 

25  about  to  consist  in  getting  rid  of  minority-members, 
and  in  introducing  a  free  breakfast-table,  and  in 
abolishing    the    Irish    Church    by  the    power   of    the 

1  "  Les  pays  qui,  comme  les  Etats-Unis,  ont  cree  un  enseigne- 

ment  populaire   considerable   sans  instruction  superieure  serieuse, 

30  expieront  longtemps  encore  leur  faute  par  leur  mediocrite  intel- 

lectuelle,  leur  grossierete  de  mceurs,  leur  esprit  superficiel,  leui 

manque  d'intelligence  generale." 


260  AMERICA. 

Nonconformists'  antipathy  to  establishments,  and 
much  more  of  the  same  kind.  And  though  our 
pauperism  and  ignorance,  and  all  the  questions  which 
are  called  social,  seem  now  to  be  forcing  themselves 
upon  his  mind,  yet  he  still  goes  on  with  his  glorifying  5 
of  the  great  towns,  and  the  Liberals,  and  their  opera- 
tions for  the  last  thirty  years.  It  never  seems  to  occur 
to  him  that  the  present  troubled  state  of  our  social 
life  has  anything  to  do  with  the  thirty  years'  blind 
worship  of  their  nostrums  by  himself  and  our  Liberal  10 
friends,  or  that  it  throws  any  doubts  upon  the  suffi- 
ciency of  this  worship.  But  he  thinks  that  what  is 
still  amiss  is  due  to  the  stupidity  of  the  Tories,  and 
will  be  cured  by  the  thoughtfulness  and  intelligence 
of  the  great  towns,  and  by  the  Liberals  going  on  15 
gloriously  with  their  political  operations  as  before ;  or 
that  it  will  cure  itself.  So  we  see  what  Mr.  Bright 
means  by  thoughtfulness  and  intelligence,  and  in  what 
matter,  according  to  him,  we  are  to  grow  in  them. 
And,  no  doubt,  in  America  all  classes  read  their  news-  2a 
paper,  and  take  a  commendable  interest  in  politics, 
more  than  here  or  anywhere  else  in  Europe. 

But  in  the  following  essay  we  have  been  led  to 
doubt  the  efficiency  of  all  this  political  operating, 
pursued  mechanically  as  our  race  pursues  it ;  and  we  25 
found  that  general  intelligence,  as  M.  Renan  calls  it,  or, 
as  we  say,  attention  to  the  reason  of  things,  was  just 
what  we  were  without,  and  that  we  were  without  it 
because  we  worshipped  our  machinery  so  devoutly. 
Therefore,  we  conclude  that  M.  Renan,  more  than  3a 
Mr.  Bright,  means  by  reason  and  intelligence  the  same 
thing  as  we  do.      And   when   M.   Renan   says   that 


AMERICA.  26 1 

America,  that  chosen  home  of  newspapers  and  politics, 
is  without  general  intelligence,  we  think  it  likely,  from 
the  circumstances  of  the  case,  that  this  is  so  ;  and 
that  in  the  things  of  the  mind,  and  in  culture  and 
5  totality,  America,  instead  of  surpassing  us  all,  falls 
short. 

And, — to  keep  to  our  point  of  the  influence  of 
religious  establishments  upon  culture  and  a  high 
development    of   our   humanity, — we    can   surely  see 

10  reasons  why,  with  all  her  energy  and  fine  gifts, 
America  does  not  show  more  of  this  development,  or 
more  promise  of  this.^Tn  the  following  essay  it  will 
be  seen  how  our  society  distributes  itself  into  Bar- 
barians,  Philistines,   and   Populace  ;    and  America  is 

15  just  ourselves,  with  the  Barbarians  quite  left  out,  and 
the  Populace  nearly.  This  leaves  the  Philistines  for 
the  great  bulk  of  the  nation  ; — a  livelier  sort  of  Philis- 
tine than  ours,  and  with  the  pressure  and  false  ideal 
of  our  Barbarians  taken  away,  but  left  all  the  more  to 

20  himself  and  to  have  his  full  swing.  And  as  we  have 
found  that  the  strongest  and  most  vital  part  of  English 
Philistinism  was  the  Puritan  and  Hebraising  middle 
class,  and  that  its  Hebraising  keeps  it  from  culture 
and  totality,  so  it  is  notorious  that  the  people  of  the 

25  United  States  issues  from  this  class,  and  reproduces 
its  tendencies, — its  narrow  conception  of  man's 
spiritual  range  and  of  his  one  thing  needful.  From 
Maine  to  Florida,  and  back  again,  all  America  He- 
braises.y/tHfficult  as  it  is  to  speak  of  a  people  merely 

30  from  whjft  one  reads,  yet  that,  I  think,  one  may  with- 
out much  fear  of  contradiction  say.  I  mean,  when  in 
the  United  States  any  spiritual  side  in  man  is  wakened 


262  AMERICA. 

to  activity,  it  is  generally  the  religious  side,  and  the 

religious  side  in  a  narrow  way  ./'Social  reformers  go 

\      to  Moses  or  St.  Paul  for  their  doctrines,  and  have  no 

^^4    notion  there  is  anywhere  else  to  go  to  ;  earnest  young 

/V*^    men  at  schools  and  universities,  instead  of  conceivings 

-u  1  salvation  as  a  harmonious  perfection  only  to  be  won 
J"T  Yr  by  unreservedly  cultivating  many  sides  in  us,  conceive 
^  %P^\  of  it  in  the  old  Puritan  fashion,  and  fling  themselves 
jT^y    ardently  upon  it  in  the  old,  false  ways  of  this  fashion, 

which  we  know  so  well,  and  such   as  Mr.  Hammond,  ia 
the  American  revivalist,  has  lately  at  Mr.  Spurgeon's 
Tabernacle  been  refreshing  our  memory  with. 

Now,  if  America  thus  Hebraises  more  than  either 
England  or  Germany,  will  any  one  deny  that  the  absence 
of  religious  establishments  has  much  to  do  with  it  ?  15 
We  have  seen  how  establishments  tend  to  give  us  a 
sense  of  a  historical  life  of  the  human  spirit,  outside 
and  beyond  our  own  fancies  and  feelings  ;    how  they 
thus  tend  to  suggest  new  sides  and  sympathies  in  us 
to  cultivate  ;    how,  further,  by  saving  us  from  having  20 
to  invent  and  fight  for  our  own  forms  of  religion,  they 
give  us  leisure  and  calm  to  steady  our  view  of  religion 
itself, — the  most  overpowering  of  objects,  as  it  is  the 
grandest, — and  to  enlarge   our  first  crude  notions  of 
the    one   thing   needful.     But,    in    a    serious    people,  25 
where  every  one  has  to  choose  and  strive  for  his  own 
order  and  discipline  of  religion,  the  contention  about 
these    non-essentials    occupies    his    mind.       His    first 
crude  notions  about  the  one  thing  needful  do  not  get 
purged,  and  they  invade  the  whole  spiritual  man  in  30 
him,  and  then,  making  a  solitude,  they  call  it  heavenly 
peace. 


AMERICA.  263 

I  remember  a  Nonconformist  manufacturer,  in  a 
t,wn  of  the  Midland  counties,  telling  me  that  when  he 
**  came  there,  some  years  ago,  the  place  had  no 
Ussenters  ;  but  he  had  opened  an  Independent  chapel 

T'/f  T  c,hurch  and  Dissent  u'ere  Pretty  W 

d    ded,   Wlth    harp  CQntests   beuveen   them       4  ^.7 

flit  this  seemed  a  pity.     "  A  pity  ?  ■■    cried  he  ;    "  not 

ST    r  °n,y  fnk  °f  aU  the  ZeaI  a«d  activity  which 
th .collision  calls  forth  !  »     "Ah,  but,  my  dear  friend  » 

»I   iswered,   "only  think  of  all  the  nonsense  which 

ya  now  hold  quite  firmly,   which  you  would  never 

ha    held  if  you  had  not    been    contradicting   your 

adlrsary  m  it  all  these  years  !  "     The  more  serious 

people,  and  the  more  prominent  the  religious  side 

*5  in  ,  the  greater  is  the  danger  of  this  side,  if  set  to 
chQe  out  forms  for  itself  and   fight  for  existence 
sweng   and     spreading    till    it    swallows    all    other 

TX\  S1t\UP'  ilUercePts  and  ^sorbs  all  nutriment 
win  should  have  gone  to  them,  and  leaves  Hebraism 
2oramnt  in  us  and  Hellenism  stamped  out. 

Cure,    and    the    harmonious    perfection    of   our 
whobein      and  what  we  caU  to  ^^^  ^ 

3rMry,  maUerS-     And  eVGn  the  institutions, 

whicshould   develop  these,   take  the  same  narrow 

*5  and  ;t,al  view  of  humanity  and  its  wants  as  the  free 

of  mC  C°rimitieS  take-  J«st  as  the  free  churches 
of  Mheecher  or  Brother  Noyes,  with  their  provin- 
ciahind  want  of  centrality,  make  mere  Hebraisers 
m  rel,n  and  not  perfect  men,  so  the  university  of 
3oMr.  la  Cornell,  a  really  noble  monument  of  his 
muniface,  yet  seems  to  rest  on  a  misconception  of 
what  ure  truly  is,  and  to  be  calculated  to  produce 


264  ,  AMERICA. 

miners,  or  engineers,  or  architects,  not  sweetness  aid 
light. 

And,  therefore,  when  Mr.  White  asks  the  same  kiid 
of  question  about  America  that  he  has  asked  about 

■  England,  and  wants  to  know  whether,  without  religims  5 
establishments,  as  much  is  not  done  in  America  or 

\the  higher  national  life  as  is  done  for  that  life  hre, 
we  answer  in  the  same  way  as  we  did  before,  tha  as 
much  is  not  done.  Because  to  enable  and  stir  up 
people  to  read  their  Bible  and  the  newspapers,  ari  to  10 
get  a  practical  knowledge  of  their  business,  doe  not 
serve  to  the  higher  spiritual  life  of  a  nation  so  mch 
as  culture,  truly  conceived,  serves  ;  and  a  trueon- 
ception  of  culture  is,  as  M.  Renan's  words  shovjust 

3-vhat  America  fails  in.  15 

To  the  many  who  think  that  spirituality,  and  ^eet- 
ness,  and  light,  are  all  moonshine,  this  will  not  pear 
to  matter  much  ;    but  with  us,  who  value  thei  and 
who  think  that  we  have  traced  much  of  our  esent 
discomfort  to  the  want  of  them,  it  weighs  a  gre  deal.  20 
So  not  only  do  we  say  that  the  Nonconforms  have 
got  provincialism   and  lost  totality  by  the  wt  of  a 
religious    establishment,    but    we    say    that    t   very 
example  which  they  bring  forward  to  help  t'r  case 
makes  against  them  ;  and  that  when  they  triuihantly  25 
show  us  America    without    religious   establments, 
they  only  show  us  a  whole  nation  touched,  *dst  all 
its   greatness    and    promise,    with    that    procialism 
which  it  is  our  aim  to  extirpate  in  the  Enjh  Non- 
conformist.— Culture  a?id  Anarchy,  ed.  i8o>p.  xxi-30 

xxviii-  GjuutJU^  (^amajuTt  i$&-    t*_ 


Emerson.       «/£*>  Ou*  ^/*^\jL 

Forty  years  ago,  when  I  was  an  undergraduate  at    ^iff/d, 
Oxford,  voices  were  in  the  air  there  which  haunt  my 
memory  still.     Happy  the  man  who  in  that  susceptible 
season  of  youth  hears  such  voices  !  they  are  a  posses- 
5  sion  to  him  for  ever.     No  such  voices  as  those  which 
we  heard  in  our  youth  at  Oxford  are  sounding  there 
now.     Oxford  has  more  criticism  now,  more  knowl- 
edge, more  light  ;    but   such   voices  as  those  of  our 
•H       /fe^1  *'  nas  no  l°nSer-     The  name  of  Cardinal  New- 
^X^4ornan   is  a  great  name   to  the  imagination   still  ;    his 

■*  genius  and  his  style  are  still  things  of  power.  But  he 
is  over  eighty  years  old  ;  he  is  in  the  Oratory  at  Bir- 
mingham ;  he  has  adopted,  for  the  doubts  and  difficul- 
ties which  beset  men's  minds  to-day,  a  solution  which, 

15  to  speak  frankly,  is  impossible.  Forty  years  ago  he 
was  in  the  very  prime  of  life  ;  he  was  close  at  hand 
to  us  at  Oxford  ;  he  was  preaching  in  St.  Mary's  pul- 
pit every  Sunday ;  he  seemed  about  to  transform  and 
to   renew  what  was   for   us    the    most   national    and 

20  natural  institution  in  the  world,  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. Who  could  resist  the  charm  of  that  spiritual 
apparition,  gliding  in  the  dim  afternoon  light  through 
the  aisles  of  St.  Mary's,  rising  into  the  pulpit,  and 
then,  in  the  most  entrancing  of  voices,  breaking  the 

25  silence  with  words  and  thoughts  which  were  a  reli- 
gious   music, — subtle,   sweet,  mournful  ?     I    seem   to 

265 


hear  him  still,  saying:  "After  the  fever  of  life,  aftel 
wearinesses  and  sicknesses,  fightings  and  despondings, 
languor  and  fretfulness,  struggling  and  succeeding  ; 
after  all   the  changes  and  chances  of   this  troubled, 
unhealthy  state, — at   length    comes    death,   at   length  5 
the  white  throne  of  God,  at  length  the  beatific  vision."  /I 
Or,  if  we  followed  him  back  to  his  seclusion  at  Little- 
more,  that  dreary  village  by  the  London  road,  and  to 
the  house  of  retreat  and  the  church  which  he  built 
there, — a  mean  house  such  as  Paul  might  have  lived  10 
in   when   he  was   tent-making  at   Ephesus,  a  church 
plain  and  thinly  sown  with   worshippers, — who   could 
resist  him  there  either,  welcoming  back  to  the  severe 
joys  of  church-fellowship,  and  of  daily   worship  and 
prayer,  the  firstlings  of  a  generation  which  had  well- 15 
nigh  forgotten  them  ?     Again   I  seem   to   hear   him  : 
"  The  season  is  chill  and  dark,  and  the  breath  of  the 
morning  is  damp,  and  worshippers  are  few  ;  but  all 
this  befits  those  who  are  by  their  profession  penitents 
and  mourners,  watchers  and  pilgrims.     More  dear  to  20 
them  that  loneliness,  more  cheerful  that  severity,  and 
more  bright  that  gloom,  than  all  those  aids  and  appli- 
ances of  luxury  by  which  men  nowadays  attempt  to 
make  prayer  less  disagreeable  to   them.     True   faith 
does  not  covet  comforts  ;  they  who  realise  that  awful  25 
day,  when  they  shall  see  Him  face  to  face  whose  eyes 
are  as  a  flame  of  fire,  will  as  little  bargain  to  pray 
pleasantly  now  as  they  will  think  of  doing  so  then." 

Somewhere  or  other  I  have  spoken  of  those   "last 
enchantments    of    the    Middle    Age"    which    Oxford  30 
sheds  around    us,   and    here   they   were  !     But    there 
were  other  voices  sounding  in  our  ear  besides  New- 


EMERSON.  267 

man's.  There  was  the  puissant  voice  of  Carlyle  ;  sG 
sorely  strained,  over-used,  and  misused  since,  but 
then  fresh,  comparatively  sound,  and  reaching  our 
hearts  with  true,  pathetic  eloquence.^^Who  can  forget 
5  the  emotion  of  receiving  in  its  first  freshness  such  a 
sentence  as  that  sentence  of  Carlyle  upon  Edward 
Irving,  then  just  dead  :  "  Scotland  sent  him  forth  a 
herculean  man  ;  our  mad  Babylon  wore  and  wasted 
him   with  all   her  engines, — and  it   took    her    twelve 

10  years  !  ,/>yA  greater  voice  still, — the  greatest  voice  of 
the  century, — came  to  us  in  those  youthful  years 
through  Carlyle  :  the  voice  of  Goethe^To  this  day, 
— such  is  the  force  of  youthful  associations, — I  read 
the   Wilhelm  Meister  with  more   pleasure  in   Carlyle's 

15  translation  than  in  the  original.  The  large,  liberal 
view  of  human  life  in  Wilhelm  Meister,  how  novel  it 
was  to  the  Englishman  in  those  days  !  and  it  was 
salutary,  too,  and  educative  for  him,  doubtless,  as 
well  as  novel.     But  what  moved  us  most  in    Wilhelm 

20  Meister  was  that  which,  after  all,  will  always  move 
the  young  most, — the  poetry,  the  eloquence.  Never, 
surely,  was  Carlyle's  prose  so  beautiful  and  pure  as 
in  his  rendering  of  the  Youths'  dirge  over  Mignon  ! — 
"  Well  is  our  treasure  now  laid  up,  the  fair  image  of 

25  the  past.  Here  sleeps  it  in  the  marble,  undecaying  ; 
in  your  hearts,  also,  it  lives,  it  works.  Travel,  travel, 
back  into  life  !  Take  along  with  you  this  holy  earnest- 
ness, for  earnestness  alone  makes  life  eternity."  Here 
we  had  the  voice  of  the  great  Goethe  ; — not  the  stiff, 

30  and  hindered,  and  frigid,  and  factitious  Goethe  who 
speaks  to  us  too  often  from  those  sixty  volumes  of 
his,  but  of  the  great  Goethe,  and  the  true  one. 


268  EMERSON. 

And  besides  those  voices,  there  came  to  us  in  that 
old  Oxford  time  a  voice  also  from  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic, — a  clear  and  pure  voice,  which  for  my  ear, 
at  any  rate,  brought  a  strain  as  new,  and  moving,  and 
unforgettable,  as  the  strain  of  Newman,  or  Carlyle,  or  5 
Goethe^  3vlr.  Lowell  has  well  described  the  appari- 
tion of  Emerson  to  your  young  generation  here,  in 
that  distant  time  of  which  I  am  speaking,  and  of  his 
workings  upon  them.  He  was  your  Newman,  your 
man  of  soul  and  genius  visible  to  you  in  the  flesh,  10 
speaking  to  your  bodily  ears,  a  present  object  for 
your  heart  and  imagination.  That  is  surely  the  most 
potent  of  all  influences  !  nothing  can  come  up  to  it. 
/TTo  us  at  Oxford  Emerson  was  but  a  voice  speaking 
from  three  thousand  miles  away.  But  so  well  he  15 
spoke,  that  from  that  time  forth  Boston  Bay  and 
Concord  were  names  invested  to  my  ear  with  a  senti- 
ment akin  to  that  which  invests  for  me  the  names  of 
Oxford  and  of  Weimar*;  and  snatches  of  Emerson's 
strain  fixed  themselves  in  my  mind  as  imperishably  as  20 
any  of  the  eloquent  words  which  I  have  been  just 
now  quoting.  "  Then  dies  the  man  in  you  ;  then 
once  more  perish  the  buds  of  art,  poetry,  and  science 
as  they  have  died  already  in  a  thousand  thousand 
men."  "  What  Plato  has  thought,  he  may  think  ;  what  25 
a  saint  has  felt,  he  may  feel  ;  what  at  any  time  has 
befallen  any  man,  he  can  understand."  "Trust  thy- 
self !  every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string.  Accept 
the  place  the  Divine  Providence  has  found  for  you, 
the  society  of  your  contemporaries,  the  connexion  of  30 
events.  Great  men  have  always  done  so,  and  con- 
fided themselves  childlike  to  the  genius  of  their  age  j 


betraying  their  perception  that  the  Ettrnal  was  stir*  .  y^^x^. 
ring  at  their  heart,  working  through  their  hands,  pre-  f^ 
dominating  in  all  their  being.  And  we  are  now  men, 
and  must  accept  in  the  highest  spirit  the  same  tran- 
5  scendent  destiny  ;  and  not  pinched  in  a  corner,  not 
cowards  fleeing  before  a  revolution,  but  redeemers 
and  benefactors,  pious  aspirants  to  be  noble  clay 
plastic  under  the  Almighty  effort,  let  us  advance  and 
advance  on  chaos  and  the  dark  !  "     These   lofty  sen- 

iotences  of  Emerson,  and  a  hundred  others  of  like 
strain,  I  never  have  lost  out  of  my  memory  ;  I  never 
can  lose  them. 

At    last  I    find  myself  in   Emerson's   own  country, 
and  looking  upon  Boston  Bay.     Naturally  I  revert  to 

15  the  friend  of  my  youth.  It  is  not  always  pleasant 
to  ask  oneself  questions  about  the  friends  of  one's 
youth  ;  they  cannot  always  well  support  it.  Carlyle, 
for  instance,  in  my  judgment,  cannot  well  support 
such  a  return   upon   him.     Yet  we   should  make  the 

20  return  ;  we  should  part  with  our  illusions,  we  should 
know  the  truth.  When  I  come  to  this  country,  where 
Emerson  now  counts  for  so  much,  and  where  such 
high  claims  are  made  for  him,  I  pull  myself  together, 
and  ask  myself  what  the  truth   about   this  object  of 

25  my  youthful  admiration  really  is.  Improper  elements 
often  come  into  our  estimate  of  men.  We  have  lately 
seen  a  German  critic  make  Goethe  the  greatest  of  all 
poets,  because  Germany  is  now  the  greatest  of  mili- 
tary powers,  and  wants  a  poet  to  match.     Then,  too, 

30  America  is  a  young  country;  and  young  coun- 
tries, like  young  persons,  are  apt  sometimes  to  evince 
in  their  literary  judgments  a  want  of  scale  and  meas- 


2  7°  EMERSON. 

ure.  I  set  myself,  therefore,  resolutely  to  come  at  a 
real  estimate  of  Emerson,  and  with  a  leaning  even  to 
strictness  rather  than  to  indulgence.  That  is  the  safer 
course.  Time  has  no  indulgence  ;  any  veils  of 
illusion  which  we  may  have  left  around  an  objects 
because  we  loved  it,  Time  is  sure  to  strip  away. 

I  was  reading  the  other  day  a  notice  of  Emerson 
by  a  serious  and  interesting  American   critic.     Fifty 
or   sixty    passages    in     Emerson's    poems,    says    this 
critic, — who   had    doubtless    himself  been   nourished  10 
on  Emerson's  writings,  and  held  them  justly  dear, — 
fifty  or  sixty    passages  from    Emerson's  poems  have 
already    entered    into    English    speech    as    matter   of 
familiar  and  universally  current  quotation.     Here  is 
a  specimen  of  that  personal  sort  of  estimate  which,  for  15 
my  part,  even  in  speaking  of  authors  dear  to  me,  I 
would  try  to  avoid.     What  is  the  kind  of  phrase  of 
which  we  may  fairly  say  that  it  has  entered  into  Eng- 
ligh    speech  as  matter  of  familiar  quotation  !     Such 
a  phrase,  surely,  as  the  "  Patience  on  a  monument  "20 
of  Shakespeare  ;  as  the  "  Darkness  visible  "  of  Milton  ; 
as  the  "  Where  ignorance  is  bliss  "  of  Gray.     Of  not 
one  single  passage  in  Emerson's  poetry  can  it  be  truly 
said    that    it  has   become   a   familiar    quotation    like 
phrases  of  this  kind.     It  is  not  enough  that  it  should  25 
be  familiar  to  his  admirers,  familiar  in  New  England, 
familiar  even  throughout  the  United  States  ;  it  must 
be    familiar    to    all    readers    and    lovers  of  English 
poetry.     Of   not   more    than  one  or  two  passages  in 
Emerson's  poetry  can  it,  I  think,  be  truly  said,  that  30 
they  stand  ever-present  in  the  memory  of  even  many 


lovers  of  English  poetry.  A  great  number  of  pas- 
sages from  his  poetry  are  no  doubt  perfectly  familiar 
to  the  mind  and  lips  of  the  critic  whom  I  have  men- 
tioned, and  perhaps  a  wide  circle  of  American  readers. 
5  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  being  matter  of 
universal  quotation,  like  the  phrases  of  the  legitimate 
poets. 

And,  in  truth,  one  of  the  legitimate  poets,  Emer- 
son, in  my  opinion,  is  not.     His  poetry  is  interesting, 

ioit  makes  one  think  ;  but  it  is  not  the  poetry  of  one  of 
the  born  poets.  I  say  it  of  him  with  reluctance, 
although  I  am  sure  that  he  would  have  said  it  of  him- 
self ;  but  I  say  it  with  reluctance,  because  I  dislike 
giving  pain  to  his  admirers,  and  because  all  my  own 

15  wish,  too,  is  to  say  of  him  what  is  favourable.  But  I 
regard  myself,  not  as  speaking  to  please  Emerson's 
admirers,  not  as  speaking  to  please  myself  ;  but  rather, 
I  repeat,  as  communing  with  Time  and  Nature  con- 
cerning  the   productions  of  this   beautiful    and  rare 

20  spirit,  and  as  resigning  what  of  him  is  by  their  unalter- 
able decree  touched  with  caducity,  in  order  the  better 
to  mark  and  secure  that  in  him  which  is  immortal. 

Milton  says  that  poetry  ought  to  be  simple,  sensu- 
ous, impassioned.     Well,  Emerson's  poetry  is  seldom 

25  either  simple,  or  sensuous,  or  impassioned.  In 
general  it  lacks  directness  ;  it  lacks  concreteness  ;  it 
lacks  energy.  His  grammar  is  often  embarrassed  ; 
in  particular,  the  want  of  clearly-marked  distinction 
between  the  subject  and  the  object  of  his  sentence  is 

30  a  frequent  cause  of  obscurity  in  him.  A  poem  which 
shall  be  a  plain,  forcible,  inevitable  whole  he  hardly 
ever  produces.     Such    good  work  as  the  noble  lines 


272  EMERSON. 

graven  on  the  Concord  Monument  is  the  exception 
with  him  ;  such  ineffective  work  as  the  "  Fourth  of 
July  Ode  "  or  the  "  Boston  Hymn  "  is  the  rule. 
Even  passages  and  single  lines  of  thorough  plainness 
and  commanding  force  are  rare  in  his  poetry.  They  5 
exist,  of  course  ;  but  when  we  meet  with  them  they 
give  us  a  slight  shock  of  surprise,  so  little  has  Emer- 
son accustomed  us  to  them.  Let  me  have  the  pleasure 
of  quoting  one  or  two  of  these  exceptional  passages  : — 

"  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust,  IO 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must. 
The  youth  replies,  I  can." 

Or  again  this  : — 

"  Though  love  repine  and  reason  chafe,  15 

There  came  a  voice  without  reply  : 
'  'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe, 
When  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die.'" 

Excellent !  but    how   seldom  do  we  get  from  him 
a  strain  blown  so  clearly  and  firmly  !     Take  another  20 
passage   where  his   strain    has  not  only  clearness,  it 
has  also  grace  and  beauty  : — 

"  And  ever,  when  the  happy  child 
In  May  beholds  the  blooming  wild, 
And  hears  in  heaven  the  bluebird  sing,  25 

4  Onward,'  he  cries,  '  your  baskets  bring  ! 
In  the  next  field  is  air  more  mild, 
And  in  yon  hazy  west  is  Eden's  balmier  spring.' " 

In  the  style  and  cadence  here  there   is  a  reminis- 
cence,  I   think,  of  Gray ;  at   any  rate   the   pureness,  30 
grace,  and  beauty  of  these  lines  are  worthy  even  of 


EMERSON.  273 

Gray.  But  Gray  holds  his  high  rank  as  a  poet,  not 
merely  by  the  beauty  and  grace  of  passages  in  his 
poems  ;  not  merely  by  a  diction  generally  pure  in  an 
age  of  impure  diction  :  he  holds  it,  above  all,  by  the 
5  power  and  skill  with  which  the  evolution  of  his  poems 
is  conducted.  Here  is  his  grand  superiority  to  Collins, 
whose  diction  in  his  best  poem,  the  "Ode  to  Even- 
ing," is  purer  than  Gray's;  but  then  the  "Ode  to 
Evening "  is   like   a   river   which   loses    itself  in   the 

10  sand,  whereas  Gray's  best  poems  have  an  evolution 
sure  and  satisfying./^  Emerson's  "Mayday,"  from 
which  I  just  now  quoted,  has  no  real  evolution  at  all  ; 
it  is  a  series  of  observations.  And,  in  general,  his 
poems  have  no  evolution.^Take,   for   example,   his 

15  "  Titmouse."  Here  he  has  an  excellent  subject ;  and 
his  observation  of  Nature,  moreover,  is  always  marvel- 
lously close  and  fine.  But  compare  what  he  makes 
of  his  meeting  with  his  titmouse  with  what  Cowper 
or  Burns  makes  of  the  like  kind  of  incident  !     One 

20 never  quite  arrives  at  learning  what  the  titmouse 
actually  did  for  him  at  all,  though  one  feels  a  strong 
interest  and  desire  to  learn  it  ;  but  one  is  reduced  to 
guessing,  and  cannot  be  quite  sure  that  after  all  one 
has   guessed    right.     He   is  not   plain    and    concrete 

25  enough, — in  other  words,  not  poet  enough, — to  be 
able  to  tell  us.  And  a  failure  of  this  kind  goes 
through  almost  all  his  verse,  keeps  him  amid  sym- 
bolism and  allusion  and  the  fringes  of  things,  and, 
in  spite   of   his   spiritual   power,    deeply    impairs   his 

30  poetic  value.//  Through  the  inestimable  virtue  of 
concreteness,  a  simple  poem  like  "  The  Bridge  "  of 
Longfellow,  or  the  "  School  Days "  of  Mr.  Whittier, 


274  EMERSON. 

is  of  more  poetic  worth,  perhaps,  than  all  the  verse 
of   Emerson.^ 

I   do  not,  then,  place  Emerson    among   the   great 
poets.     But  I  go  further,  and  say  that  I  do  not  place 
him  among  the  great  writers,  the  great  men  of  letters.  5 
Who  are  the  great  men  of  letters  ?     They  are  men  like 
Cicero,  Plato,  Bacon,  Pascal,  Swift,  Voltaire, — writers 
with,  in  the  first  place,  a  genius  and  instinct  for  style  ; 
writers  whose  prose  is  by  a  kind  of  native  necessity 
true  and  sound.     Now  the  style  of  Emerson,  like  the  10 
style  of  his  transcendentalist  friends  and  of  the  "  Dial  " 
so  continually, — the  style  of  Emerson   is  capable  of 
falling  into  a  strain  like  this,  which  I  take  from  the 
beginning  of  his  "  Essay  on  Love  "  :  "  Every  soul  is  a 
celestial  being  to  every  other  soul.     The  heart  has  its  15 
sabbaths  and  jubilees,  in  which  the  world  appears  as 
a  hymeneal  feast,  and  all  natural  sounds  and  the  circle 
of  the  seasons  are  erotic  odes  and  dances."     Emerson 
altered    this    sentence    in    the    later   editions.       Like 
Wordsworth,  he  was  in  later  life  fond  of  altering  ;  and  20 
in  general  his  later  alterations,  like  those  of  Words- 
worth, are  not  improvements.     He  softened  the  pass- 
age    in    question,    however,    though    without     really 
mending  it.     I  quote  it  in  its  original  and  strongly- 
marked   form.      Arthur    Stanley   used  to    relate    that  25 
about  the  year  1840,  being  in  conversation  with  some 
Americans   in  quarantine  at   Malta,   and  thinking  to 
please    them,  he    declared    his    warm   admiration  for 
Emerson's    Essays,  then    recently    published.     How- 
ever, the  Americans  shook  their  heads,  and  told  him  30 
that  for  home  taste  Emerson  was  decidedly  too  greeny. 
We  will  hope,  for  their  sakes,  that  the  sort  of  thing 


EMERSON.  27  5 

they  had  in  their  heads  was  such  writing  as  I  have  just 
quoted.  Unsound  it  is,  indeed,  and  in  a  style  almost 
impossible  to  a  born  man  of  letters. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  quality  of  style  which 
5  marks  the  great  writer,  the  born  man  of  letters.  It 
resides  in  the  whole  tissue  of  his  work,  and  of  his  work 
regarded  as  a  composition  for  literary  purposes.  Bril- 
liant and  powerful  passages  in  a  man's  writings  do 
not  prove  his  possession  of  it  ;  it  lies  in  their  whole 

10  tissue.  Emerson  has  passages  of  noble  and  pathetic 
eloquence,  such  as  those  which  I  quoted  at  the  begin- 
ning ;  he  has  passages  of  shrewd  and  felicitous  wit ; 
he  has  crisp 'epigram  ;  he  has  passages  of  exquisitely 
touched  observation  of  nature. /'Yet  he  is  not  a  great 

15  writer  ;  his  style  has  not  the  requisite  wholeness  of 
good  tissue.  Even  Carlyle  is  not,  in  my  judgment,  a 
great  writer.  He  has  surpassingly  powerful  qualities 
of  expression,  far  more  powerful  than  Emerson's,  and 
reminding  one  of  the  gifts  of  expression  of  the  great 

20  poets, — of  even  Shakespeare  himself.  What  Emerson 
so  admirably  says  of  Carlyle's  "  devouring  eyes  and 
portraying  hand."  "  those  thirsty  eyes,  those  portrait- 
eating,  portrait-painting  eyes  of  thine,  those  fatal  per- 
ceptions," is  thoroughly  true.//  What  a  description  is 

25  Carlyle's  of  the  first  publisher  of  Sartor  Rcsartus,  "  to 
whom  the  idea  of  a  new  edition  of  Sartor  is  frightful, 
or  rather  ludicrous  unimaginable  "  ;  of  this  poor 
Fraser,  in  whose  "  wonderful  world  of  Tory  pam- 
phleteers, conservative  Younger-brothers,  Regent  Street 

50 loungers,  Crockford  gamblers,  Irish  Jesuits,  drunken 
reporters,  and  miscellaneous  unclean  persons  (whom 
nitre  and  much  soap  will  not  wash  clean),  not  a  sou] 


276  EMERSON. 

has  expressed  the  smallest  wish  that  way  ?  "  What  a 
portrait,  again,  of  the  well-beloved  John  Sterling  / 
"  One,  and  the  best,  of  a  small  class  extant  here,  who, 
nigh  drowning  in  a  black  wreck  of  Infidelity  (lighted 
up  by  some  glare  of  Radicalism  only,  now  growing  5 
dim  too),  and  about  to  perish,  saved  themselves  into  a 
Coleridgian  Shovel-Hattedness."  What  touches  in 
the  invitation  of  Emerson  to  London  !  "You  shall 
see  block-heads  by  the  million  ;  Pickwick  himself 
shall  be  visible, — innocent  young  Dickens,  reserved  for  10 
a  questionable  fate.  The  great  Wordsworth  shall  talk 
till  you  yourself  pronounce  him  to  be  a  bore. 
Southey's  complexion  is  still  healthy  mahogany  brown, 
with  a  fleece  of  white  hair,  and  eyes  that  seem  run- 
ning at  full  gallop.  Leigh  Hunt,  man  of  genius  in  the  15 
shape  of  a  cockney,  is  my  near  neighbour,  with  good 
humour  and  no  common-sense  ;  old  Rogers  with  his 
pale  head,  white,  bare,  and  cold  as  snow,  with  those 
large  blue  eyes,  cruel,  sorrowful,  and  that  sardonic 
shelf  chin.  '  How  inimitable  it  all  is  !  And  finally,  20 
for  one  must  not  go  on  forever,  this  version  of  a  Lon- 
don Sunday,  with  the  public-houses  closed  during  the 
hours  of  divine  service  !  "  It  is  silent  Sunday ;  the 
populace  not  yet  admitted  to  their  beer-shops,  till 
the  respectabilities  conclude  their  rubric  mummeries — 25 
a  much  more  audacious  feat  than  beer.'  )/  Yet  even 
Carlyle  is  not,  in  my  judgment,  to  be  called  a  great 
writer  ;  one  cannot  think  of  ranking  him  with  men 
like  Cicero  and  Plato  and  Swift  and  Voltaire.  Emer- 
son freely  promises  to  Carlyle  immortality  for  his  30 
histories.  They  will  not  have  it.  Why?  Because 
the  materials  furnished  to  him  by  that  devouring  eye 


EATER  SO  JV.  277 

of  his,  and  that  portraying  hand,  were  not  wrought  in 
and  subdued  by  him  to  what  his  work,  regarded  as  a 
composition  for  literary  purposes,  required.  Occur- 
ring in  conversation,  breaking  out  in  familiar  corre- 
5  spondence,  they  are  magnificent,  inimitable  ;  nothing 
more  is  required  of  them  ;  thus  thrown  out  anyhow, 
they  serve  their  turn  and  fulfil  their  function.  And, 
therefore,  I  should  not  wonder  if  really  Carlyle  lived, 
in  the  long  run,  by  such  an  invaluable  record  as  that 

10  correspondence  between  him  and  Emerson,  of  which 
we  owe  the  publication  to  Mr.  Charles  Norton, — by 
this  and  not  by  his  works,  as  Johnson  lives  in  Boswell, 
not  by  his  works.  For  Carlyle's  sallies,  as  the  staple 
of  a  literary  work,  become  wearisome  ;  and  as  time 

15  more  and  more  applies  to  Carlyle's  works  its  stringent 
test,  this  will  be  felt  more  and  more.  Shakespeare, 
Moliere,  Swift, — they,  too.  had,  like  Carlyle,  the 
devouring  eye  and  the  portraying  hand.  But  they  are 
great  literary  masters,  they  are  supreme  writers,  because 

20  they  knew  how  to  work  into  a  literary  composition 
their  materials,  and  to  subdue  them  to  the  purposes  of 
literary    effect.      Carlyle   is  too   wilful    for  this,   too    *         . 
turbid,  too  vehement.  "Q^JiXuJjL     *-*-  -^O^V9  **-<*-*-*£ 

You  will  think  I  deal  in  nothing*  but  negatives.     I     %-UAVi 

25  have  been  saying  that  Emerson  is  not  one  of  the  great  1 

poets,  the  great  writers.  He  has  not  their  quality  of 
style.  He  is,  however,  the  propounder  of  a  phi- 
losophy. The  Platonic  dialogues  afford  us  the  ex- 
ample of  exquisite  literary  form  and  treatment  given 

30  to  philosophical  ideas.  Plato  is  at  once  a  great  liter- 
ary man  and  a  great  philosopher.  If  we  speak  care- 
fully, we  cannot   call  Aristotle  or   Spinoza  or  Kant 


278  EMERSON. 

great  literary  men,  or  their  productions  great  literary 
works.  But  their  work  is  arranged  with  such  construc- 
tive power  that  they  build  a  philosophy,  and  are  justly 
called  great  philosophical  writers.  Emerson  cannot, 
I  think,  be  called  with  justice  a  great  philosophical  5 
writer.  He  cannot  build  ;  his  arrangement  of  philo- 
sophical ideas  has  no  progress  in  it,  no  evolution  ;  he 
does  not  construct  a  philosophy.  Emerson  himself 
knew  the  defects  of  his  method,  or  rather  want  of 
method,  very  well  ;  indeed,  he  and  Carlyle  criticise  10 
themselves  and  one  another  in  a  way  which  leaves 
little  for  any  one  else  to  do  in  the  way  of  formulating 
their  defects.  Carlyle  formulates  perfectly  the  defects 
of  his  friend's  poetic  and  literary  production  when  he 
says  of  the  "  Dial  "  :  "For  me  it  is  too  ethereal,  15 
speculative,  theoretic  ;  I  will  have  all  things  condense 
themselves,  take  shape  and  body,  if  they  are  to  have 
my  sympathy."  And,  speaking  of  Emerson's  orations, 
he  says  :  "  I  long  to  see  some  concrete  Thing,  some 
Event,  Man's  Life,  American  Forest,  or  piece  of  20 
Creation,  which  this  Emerson  loves  and  wonders  at, 
well  Emersonised, — depictured  by  Emerson,  filled  with 
the  life  of  Emerson,  and  cast  forth  from  him,  then  to 
live  by  itself.  If  these  orations  balk  me  of  this,  how 
profitable  soever  they  may  be  for  others,  I  will  not  25 
love  them."  Emerson  himself  formulates  perfectly 
the  defect  of  his  own  philosophical  productions,  when 
he  speaks  of  his  "  formidable  tendency  to  the  lapidary 
style.  I  build  my  house  of  boulders."  "  Here  I  sit 
and  read  and  write,"  he  says  again,  "with  very  little  30 
system,  and,  as  far  as  regards  composition,  with  the 
mosi  fragmentary   result  ;  paragraphs  incomprehensi- 


EMERSON.  279 

ble,   each  sentence   an  infinitely  repellent    particle." 
Nothing  can  be  truer  ;  and  the  work  of  a  Spinoza  or 
Kant,  of  the  men   who  stand   as   great   philosophical 
writers,  does  not  proceed  in  this  wise. 
i      Some  people  will  tell  you  that  Emerson's  poetry7l~4tlX(_^ 
indeed,  is  too  abstract,  and  his  philosophy  too  v^ague, 
but  that  his  best  work  is  his   English   TrafajJ^hzfpL      . 
English    Traits   are    beyond    question    very   pleasant  <»./* 
reading.     It  is  easy  to  praise  them,  easy (KTcommendV  ^vf\ 

10  the   author  of  them.     But  I    insist  on   always   trying/ 

Emerson's  work  by  the  highest  standards.  I  esteem  ~U/HMH 
him  too  much  to  try  his  work  by  any  other.  Tried)  »*-**^ 
by  the  highest  standards,  and  compared  with  th/  °1'  VU-* 
work  of  the  excellent  markers  and  recorders  of  the      A_^ 

15  traits  of  human  life, — of  writers  like  Montaigne,  LA 

Bruyere,  Addison, — the  English   Traits  will  not  stand\    %?*& 
the  comparison.     Emerson's  observation  has  not  the  /    ^ 
disinterested  quality  of  the  observation  of  these  mas- 
ters.    It  is  the  observation  of   a  man  systematically 

20  benevolent,  as  Hawthorne's  observation  in  Our  Old 
Hotne  is  the  work  of  a  man  chagrined.  Hawthorne's 
literary  talent  is  of  the  first  order.  His  subjects  are 
generally  not  to  me  subjects  of  the  highest  interest ; 
but  his  literary  talent  is  of  the  first  order,  the  finest,  I 

25  think,  which  America  has  yet  produced, — finer,  by 
much,  than  Emerson's.  Yet  Our  Old  Home  is  not  a 
masterpiece  any  more  than  English  Traits.  In  neither 
of  them  is  the  observer  disinterested  enough.  The 
author's  attitude  in  each  of  these  cases  can  easily  be 

30  understood  and  defended.  Hawthorne  was  a  sensi- 
tive man,  so  situated  in  England  that  he  was  perpetu- 
ally in  contact  with   the  British   Philistine  ;  and  the 


280  EMERSON. 

British  Philistine  is  a  trying  personage.  Emerson's 
systematic  benevolence  comes  from  what  he  himself 
calls  somewhere  his  "  persistent  optimism";  and  his 
persistent  optimism  is  the  root  of  his  greatness  and 
the  source  of  his  charm.  But  still  let  us  keep  ours 
literary  conscience  true,  and  judge  every  kind  of 
literary  work  by  the  laws  really  proper  to  it.  The 
kind  of  work  attempted  in  the  English  Traits  and  in 
Our  Old  Home  is  work  which  cannot  be  done  per- 
fectly with  a  bias  such  as  that  given  by  Emerson's  10 
optimism  or  by  Hawthorne  s  chagrin.  Consequently, 
neither  English  Traits  nor  Our  Old  Home  is  a  work 
of  perfection  in  its  kind. 

Not    with    the    Miltons    and    Grays,    not    with    the 
Platos  and   Spinozas,   not  with   the  Swifts  and   Vol-  15 
taires,  not  with  the  Montaignes  and  Addisons,  can  we 
rank  Emerson.     His  work  of  various  kinds,  when  one 
compares  it  with  the  work  done  in  a  corresponding 
kind  by  these  masters,  fails  to  stand  the  comparison. 
No  man  could  see  this  clearer  than  Emerson  himself.  20 
It  is  hard  not  to  feel  despondency  when  we  contem- 
plate our  failures  and  short-comings  :  and  Emerson, 
the  least  self-flattering  and  the  most  modest  of  men, 
saw  so  plainly  what  was  lacking  to  him  that  he  had  his 
moments   of   despondency.     "Alas,    my    friend,"    he  25 
writes  in  reply  to  Carlyle,  who   had  exhorted  him  to 
creative  work, — "  Alas,  my  friend,  I  can  do  no  such 
gay  thing  as  you  say.     I  do  not  belong  to  the  poets, 
but    only    to    a   low    department  of     literature, — the 
reporters;     suburban     men."       He     deprecated     his  30 
friend's  praise  ;  praise  "  generous  to  a  fault,"  he  calls 
it  ;    praise  "  generous  to  the    shaming  of  me, — cold, 


EMERSON.  281 

fastidious,  ebbing  person  that  I  am.  Already  in  a 
former  letter  you  had  said  too  much  good  of  my  poor 
little  arid  book,  which  is  as  sand  to  my  eyes.  I  can 
only  say  that  I  heartily  wish  the  book  were  better  ; 
5  and  I  must  try  and  deserve  so  much  favour  from  the 
kind  gods  by  a  bolder  and  truer  living  in  the  months 
to  come, — such  as  may  perchance  one  day  release  and 
invigorate  this  cramp  hand  of  mine.  When  I  see  how 
much  work  is  to  be  done  ;  what  room  for  a  poet,  for 

10  any  spiritualist,  in  this  great,  intelligent,  sensual,  and 
avaricious  America, — I  lament  my  fumbling  fingers 
and  stammering  tongue."  Again,  as  late  as  1870,  he 
writes  to  Carlyle  :  "  There  is  no  example  of  con- 
stancy like  yours,  and  it  always  stings  my  stupor  into 

15  temporary  recovery  and  wonderful  resolution  to 
accept  the  noble  challenge.  But  '  the  strong  hours 
conquer  us  ';  and  I  am  the  victim  of  miscellany, — 
miscellany  of  designs,  vast  debility,  and  procrastina- 
tion."    The    forlorn    note   belonging    to    the   phrase, 

20  "vast  debility,"  recalls  that  saddest  and  most  dis- 
couraged of  writers,  the  author  of  Obennann,  Senan- 
cour,  with  whom  Emerson  has  in  truth  a  certain 
kinship.  He  has,  in  common  with  Senancour,  his 
pureness,  his  passion  for  nature,  his  single  eye  ;  and 

25  here  we  find  him  confessing,  like  Senancour,  a  sense  in 
himself  of  sterility  and  impotence. 

And  now   I   think  I  have  cleared  the  ground.     I 

have  given  up  to  Envious  Time  as  much  of  Emerson 

as  Time  can  fairly  expect  ever  to  obtain.     We  have 

30  not  in   Emerson  a  great   poet,  a  great  writer,  a  great 

philosophy-maker.     His  relation  to  us  is  not  that  of 


282  EMERSON. 

one  of  those  personages  ;  yet  it  is  a  relation  of,  I 
think,  even  superior  importance.  His  relation  to  us 
is  more  like  that  of  the  Roman  Emperor  Marcus 
Aurelius.  Marcus  Aurelius  is  not  a  great  writer,  a 
great  philosophy-maker  ;  he  is  the  friend  and  aider  of  5 
those  wio  would  live  in  the  spirit.  Emerson  is  the 
same^He  is  the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would 
live  in  the  spirit.  (/KM  the  points  in  thinking  which 
are  necessary  for  this  purpose  he  takes  ;  but  he  does 
not  combine  them  into  a  system,  or  present  them  as  a  io 
regular  philosophy.  Combined  in  a  system  by  a  man 
with  the  requisite  talent  for  this  kind  of  thing,  they 
would  be  less  useful  than  as  Emerson  gives  them  to 
us  ;  and  the  man  with  the  talent  so  to  systematise 
them  would  be  less  impressive  than  Emerson.  They  15 
do  very  well  as  they  now  stand  ;  like  "  boulders,"  as 
he  says  ;  in  "  paragraphs  incompressible,  each  sen- 
tence an  infinitely  repellent  particle."  In  such  sen- 
tences his  main  points  recur  again  and  again,  and 
become  fixed  in  the  memory.  20 

We  all  know  them.  First  and  foremost,  character. 
Character  is  everything.  "  That  which  all  things  tend 
to  educe, — which  freedom,  cultivation,  intercourse, 
revolutions,  go  to  form  and  deliver, — is  character." 
Character  and  self-reliance.  'Trust  thyself!  every  25 
heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string."  And  yet  we  have 
our  being  in  a  not  ourselves.  '  There  is  a  power  above 
and  behind  us,  and  we  are  the  channels  of  its  com- 
munications." But  our  lives  must  be  pitched  higher. 
"  Life  must  be  lived  on  a  higher  plane;  we  must  go  up  30 
to  a  higher  platform,  to  which  we  are  always  invited 
to  ascend;  there  the  whole  scene  changes."     The  good 


EMERSON.  283 

we  need  is  for  ever  close  to  us,  though  we  attain  it 
not.  ''  On  the  brink  of  the  waters  of  life  and  truth, 
we  are  miserably  dying."  This  good  is  close  to  us, 
moreover,  in  our  daily  life,  and  in  the  familiar,  homely 

5  places.  "The  unremitting  retention  of  simple  and 
high  sentiments  in  obscure  duties, — that  is  the  maxim 
for  us.  Let  us  be  poised  and  wise,  and  our  own  to- 
day. Let  us  treat  the  men  and  women  well, — treat 
them   as   if  they  were  real;  perhaps  they  are.     Men 

10  live  in  their  fancy,  like  drunkards  whose  hands  are 
too  soft  and  tremulous  for  successful  labour.  I  settle 
myself  ever  firmer  in  the  creed,  that  we  should  not 
postpone  and  refer  and  wish,  but  do  broad  justice 
where  we  are,  by  whomsoever  we  deal  with;  accepting 

15  our  actual  companions  and  circumstances,  however 
humble  or  odious,  as  the  mystic  officials  to  whom  the 
universe  has  delegated  its  whole  pleasure  for  us. 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut  River,  and  Boston  Bay, 
you  think  paltry  places,  and  the  ear  loves  names  of 

20  foreign  and  classic  topography.  But  here  we  are; 
and  if  we  will  tarry  a  little  we  may  come  to  learn  that 
here  is  best.  See  to  it  only  that  thyself  is  here." 
Furthermore,  the  good  is  close  to  us  all.  "  I  resist 
the  scepticism  of  our  education  and  of  our  educated 

25  men.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  differences  of  opinion 
and  character  in  men  are  organic.  I  do  not  recog- 
nise,  besides  the  class  of  the  good  and  the  wise,  a 
permanent  class  of  sceptics,  or  a  class  of  conserva- 
tives, or  of  malignants,  or  of  materialists.     I  do  not 

30  believe  in  the  classes.  Everyman  has  a  call  of  the 
power  to  do  something  unique."  Exclusiveness  is 
deadly.     "  The  exclusive  in  social  life  does  not  see 


284  EMERSON. 

that  he  excludes  himself  from  enjoyment  in  the  at- 
tempt to  appropriate  it.  The  exclusionist  in  religion 
does  not  see  that  he  shuts  the  door  of  heaven  on  him- 
self in  striving  to  shut  out  others.  Treat  men  as 
pawns  and  ninepins,  and  you  shall  suffer  as  well  as  5 
they.  If  you  leave  out  their  heart  you  shall  lose 
your  own.  The  selfish  man  suffers  more  from  his 
selfishness  than  he  from  whom  that  selfishness  with- 
holds some  important  benefit."  A  sound  nature  will 
be  inclined  to  refuse  ease  and  self-indulgence.  "  To  10 
live  with  some  rigour  of  temperance,  or  some  extreme 
of  generosity,  seems  to  be  an  asceticism  which  com- 
mon good  nature  would  appoint  to  those  who  are  at 
ease  and  in  plenty,  in  sign  that  they  feel  a  brotherhood 
with  the  great  multitude  of  suffering  men.''  Compen- 15 
sation,  finally,  is  the  great  law  of  life;  it  is  everywhere, 
it  is  sure,  and  there  is  no  escape  from  it.  This  is  that 
"  law  alive  and  beautiful,  which  works  over  our  heads 
and  under  our  feet.  Pitiless,  it  avails  itself  of  our 
success  when  we  obey  it,  and  of  our  ruin  when  we  20 
contravene  it.  We  are  all  secret  believers  in  it.  It 
rewards  actions  after  their  nature.  The  reward  of  a 
thing  well  done  is  to  have  done  it.  The  thief  steals 
from  himself,  the  swindler  swindles  himself.  You 
must  pay  at  last  your  own  debt."  25 

This  is  tonic  indeed  !     And  let  no  one  object  that 
t  is  too  general;  that  more  practical,  positive  direc- 

A.-44O     tion  is  what  we  want;  that  Emerson's  optimism,  self- 
reliance,  and  indifference  to  favourable  conditions  for 

<r^i^-     our  life  and  growth  have  in  them  something  of  dan- 30 
ger.     "  Trust  thyself;"    "  what  attracts  my   attention 
shall  have  it;"  "though  thou  shouldst  walk  the  world 


EMERSON.  285 

over  thou  shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  condition  inop- 
portune or  ignoble;"  "  what  we  call  vulgar  society  is 
that  society  whose  poetry  is  not  yet  written,  but  which 
you  shall  presently  make  as  enviable  and  renowned  as 
5  any."  With  maxims  like  these,  we  surely  it  may  be 
said,  run  some  risk  of  being  made  too  well  satisfied 
with  our  own  actual  self  and  state,  however  crude  and 
inperfect  they  may  be.  ''  Trust  thyself  ?  ''  It  may  be 
said   that    the   common   American    or    Englishman    is 

;o  more  than  enough  disposed  already  to  trust  himself. 
I  often  reply,  when  our  sectarians  are  praised  for  fol- 
lowing conscience :  Our  people  are  very  good  in 
following  their  conscience  ;  where  they  are  not  so 
good  is  in  ascertaining  whether   their  conscience  tells 

*5  them  right.  '  What  attracts  my  attention  shall  have 
it?''  Well,  that  is  our  people's  plea  when  they  run 
after  the  Salvation  Army  and  desire  Messrs.  Moody 
and  Sankey.  '  Thou  shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  con- 
dition  inopportune  or  ignoble  ?  '       But   think  of    the 

20  turn  of  the  good  people  of  our  race  for  producing  a 
life  of  hideousness  and  immense  ennui  ;  think  of  that 
specimen  of  your  own  New  England  life  which  Mr. 
Howells  gives  us  in  one  of  his  charming  stories  which 
I  was  reading  lately;  think  of  the  life  of  that  ragged 

25  New  England  farm  in  the  Lady  of  the  Aroostook;  think 
of  Deacon  Blood,  and  Aunt  Maria,  and  the  straight- 
backed  chairs  with  black  horse-hair  seats  and  Ezra 
Perkins  with  perfect  self-reliance  depositing  his  trav- 
ellers in  the  snow  !      I  can    truly  say  that   in  the  little 

30  which  I  have  seen  of  the  life  of  New  England,  I  am 
more  struck  with  what  has  been  achieved  than  with 
the  crudeness  and  failure.      Ikit  no  d  -ubt  there  is  still 


286  EMERSON. 

a  great  deal  of  crudeness  also.  Your  own  novelists 
say  there  is,  and  I  suppose  they  say  true.  In  the  New 
England,  as  in  the  Old,  our  people  have  to  learn,  I 
suppose,  not  that  their  modes  of  life  are  beautiful  and 
excellent  already;  they  have  rather  to  learn  that  they  5 
must  transform  them. 

To  adopt  this  line  of  objection  to  Emerson's  deliver- 
ances would,  however,  be  unjust.     In  the  first  place, 
Emerson's  points  are  in  themselves  true,  if  understood 
in  a  certain  high  sense  ;    they  are   true   and  fruitful.  10 
And  the  right  work  to  be  done,  at  the  hour  when  he 
appeared,  was  to  affirm  them  generally  and  absolutely. 
Only  thus  could  he  break  through  the  hard  and  fast 
barrier  of  narrow,  fixed  ideas,  which  he  found  con- 
fronting  him,  and    win    an    entrance    for  new  ideas.  15 
Had    lie    attempted    developments    which    may    now 
strike  us  as  expedient,  he  would  have  excited  fierce 
antagonism,  and  probably  effected  little  or  nothing. 
The  time  might  come  for  doing  other  work  later,  but 
the  work  which  Emerson  did  was  the  right  work  to  be  20 
done  then. 

In  the  second  place,  strong  as  was  Emerson's 
optimism,  and  unconquerable  as  was  his  belief  in  a 
good  result  to  emerge  from  all  which  he  saw  going  on 
around  him,  no  misanthropical  satirist  ever  saw  short-  25 
comings  and  absurdities  more  clearly  than  he  did.  or 
exposed  them  more  courageously.  When  he  sees  "  the 
meanness,"  as  he  calls  it,  ''of  American  politics,'  he 
congratulates  Washington  on  being  ''  long  already 
happily  dead,"  on  being  'wrapt  in  his  shroud  and  30 
for  ever  safe."  With  how  firm  a  touch  he  delineates 
the  faults  of  your  two  great  political  parties  of  forty 


EMERSON.  287 

years  ago!  The  Democrats,  he  says,  "have  not  at 
heart  the  ends  which  give  to  the  name  of  democracy 
what  hope  and  virtue  are  in  it.  The  spirit  of  our 
American  radicalism  is  destructive  and  aimless  ;  it  is 
5  not  loving  ;  it  has  no  ulterior  and  divine  ends,  but  is 
destructive  only  out  of  hatred  and  selfishness.  On 
the  other  side,  the  conservative  party,  composed  of  the 
most  moderate,  able,  and  cultivated  part  of  the  popu- 
lation, is  timid,  and  merely  defensive  of  property.     It 

10  vindicates  no  right,  it  aspires  to  no  real  good,  it 
brands  no  crime,  it  proposes  no  generous  policy. 
From  neither  party,  when  in  power,  has  the  world  any 
benefit  to  expect  in  science,  art,  or  humanity,  at  all 
commensurate  with  the  resources  of  the  nation."    Then 

15  with  what  subtle  though  kindly  irony  he  follows  the 
gradual  withdrawal  in  New  England,  in  the  last  half 
century,  of  tender  consciences  from  the  social 
organisations, — the  bent  for  experiments  such  as  that 
of  Brook  Farm  and   the   like, — follows   it   in   all  its 

20  "  dissidence  of  dissent  and  Protestantism  of  the  Pro- 
testant religion  !  "  He  even  loves  to  rally  the  New 
Englander  on  his  philanthropical  activity,  and  to  find 
his  beneficence  and  its  institutions  a  bore  !  "  Your 
miscellaneous  popular  charities,  the  education  at  col- 

25  lege  of  fools,  the  building  of  meeting-houses  to  the 
vain  end  to  which  many  of  these  now  stand,  alms  to 
sots,  and  the  thousand-fold  relief  societies, — though  I 
confess  with  shame  that  I  sometimes  succumb  and 
give  the  dollar,  yet  it  is  a  wicked  dollar,  which  by  and. 

30 by  I  shall  have  the  manhood  to  withhold."  "Our 
Sunday  schools  and  churches  and  pauper  societies 
are  yokes  to  the  neck.     We  pain  ourselves  to  please 


288  EMERSON. 

nobody.  There  are  natural  ways  of  arriving  at  the 
same  ends  at  which  these  aim,  but  do  not  arrive." 
"  Nature  does  not  like  our  benevolence  or  our  learning 
much  better  than  she  likes  our  frauds  and  wars. 
When  we  come  out  of  the  caucus,  or  the  bank,  or  the  5 
Abolition  convention,  or  the  Temperance  meeting,  or 
the  Transcendental  club,  into  the  fields  and  woods, 
she  says  to  us  :  '  So  hot,  my  little  sir  ? '  " 

Yes,  truly,  his    insight  is  admirable  ;     his  truth  is 
precious.     Yet  the  secret  of  his  effect  is  not  even  in  10 
these  ;  it  is  in  his  temper.     It  is  in  the  hopeful,  serene, 
beautiful    temper   wherewith  these,  in  Emerson,  are 
indissolubly  joined  ;    in  which  they  work,   and  have 
their  being.     He  says  himself  :  "  We  judge  of  a  man's 
wisdom  by  his  hope,  knowing  that  the  perception  of  15 
the  inexhaustibleness  of  nature  is  an  immortal  youth." 
If  this  be  so,  how  wise  is  Emerson  !    for  never  had 
man  such  a  sense  of  the  inexhaustibleness  of  nature, 
and  such  hope.     It  was  the  ground  of  his  being  ;   it 
never  failed  him.     Even  when  he   is  sadly  avowing  20 
the  imperfection  of  his  literary  power  and  resources, 
lamenting  his  fumbling  fingers  and  stammering  tongue, 
he  adds  :    "  Yet,  as  I  tell  you,  I  am  very  easy  in  my 
mind  and  never  dream  of  suicide.      My  whole  phi- 
losophy, which  is  very  real,  teaches  acquiescence  and  25 
optimism.     Sure  I   am    that    the  right   word   will  be 
spoken,  though  I  cut  out  my  tongue."     In  his  old  age, 
with  friends  dying  and  life  failing,  his  tone  of  cheerful, 
forward-looking  hope  is  still  the  same.     "A  multitude 
of  young  men  are  growing  up  here  of  high  promise,  30 
and  I  compare  gladly  the  social  poverty  of  my  youth 
with  the  power  on  which  these  draw."     His  abiding 


EMERSON.  289 

word  for  us,  the  word  by  which  being  dead  he  yet 
speaks  to  us,  is  this  :  "  That  which  befits  us,  embosomed 
in  beauty  and  wonder  as  we  are,  is  cheerfulness  and 
courage,  and  the  endeavour  to  realise  our  aspirations. 
5  Shall  not  the  heart,  which  has  received  so  much,  trust 

the  Power  by  which  it  lives  ?  " 
//  One  can  scarcely  overrate  the  importance  of  thus 
holding  fast  to  happiness  and  hope.     It  gives  to  Em- 
erson's work  an  invaluable   virtue.     As  Wordsworth's 

10  poetry  is,  in  my  judgment,  the  most  important  work 
done  in  verse,  in  our  language,  during  the  present 
century,  so  Emerson's  Essays  are,  I  think,  the  most 
important  work  done  in  prose.  His  work  is  more  im- 
portant  than   Carlyle's.     Let   us  be  just    to   Carlyle, 

15  provoking  though  he  often  is.  Not  only  has  he  that 
genius  of  his  which  makes  Emerson  say  truly  of  his 
letters,  that,  "  they  savour  always  of  eternity."  More 
than  this  may  be  said  of  him.  The  scope  and  upshot 
of  his  teaching  are   true  ;     "  his   guiding  genius,"  to 

20 quote  Emerson  again,  is  really  "his  moral  sense,  his 
perception  of  the  sole  importance  of  the  truth  and 
justice."  But  considei  Carlyle's  temper,  as  we  have 
been  considering  Emerson's  !  take  his  own  account  of 
it !     "  Perhaps    London   is  the   proper    place   for  me 

25  after  all,  seeing  all  places  are  /^proper  :  who  knows  ? 
Meanwhile,  I  lead  a  most  dyspeptic,  solitary,  self- 
shrouded  life  ;  consuming,  if  possible  in  silence,  my 
considerable  daily  allotment  of  pain  ;  glad  when  any 
strength  is  left  in  me  for  writing,  which  is  the  only 

30  use  I  can  see  in  myself, — too  rare  a  case  of  late.  The 
ground  of  my  existence  is  black  as  death  ;  too  black, 
when  all  void  too  ;  but  at  times  there  paint  themselves 


290  EMERSON. 

on  it  pictures  of  gold,  and  rainbow,  and  lightning  ;  all 
the  brighter  for  the  black  ground,  I  suppose.  Withal, 
I  am  very  much  of  a  fool." — No,  not  a  fool,  but  turbid 
and  morbid,  wilful  and  perverse.  "  We  judge  of  a 
man's  wisdom  by  his  hope."  5 

Carlyle's  perverse  attitude  towards  happiness  cuts 
him  off  from  hope.  He  fiercely  attacks  the  desire  for 
happiness  ;  his  grand  point  in  Sartor,  his  secret  in 
which  the  soul  may  find  rest,  is  that  one  shall  cease  to 
desire  happiness,  that  one  should  learn  to  say  to  one- 10 
self  :  "  What  if  thou  wert  born  and  predestined  not  to 
be  happy,  but  to  be  unhappy  !  "  He  is  wrong  ;  Saint 
Augustine  is  the  better  philosopher,  who  says  :  "Act 
we  must  in  pursuance  of  what  gives  us  most  delight." 
Epictetus  and  Augustine  can  be  severe  moralists  15 
enough  ;  but  both  of  them  know  and  frankly  say  that 
the  desire  for  happiness  is  the  root  and  ground  of 
man's  being.  Tell  him  and  show  him  that  he  places 
his  happiness  wrong,  that  he  seeks  for  delight  where 
delight  will  never  be  really  found  ;  then  you  illumine  20 
and  further  him.  But  you  only  confuse  him  by  telling 
him  to  cease  to  desire  happiness  ;  and  you  will  not 
tell  him  this  unless  you  are  already  confused  yourself. 

Carlyle  preached  the  dignity  of  labour,  the  necessity 
of  righteousness,  the  love  of  veracity,  the  hatred  of  25 
shams.  He  is  said  by  many  people  to  be  a  great 
teacher,  a  great  helper  for  us,  because  he  does  so. 
But  what  is  the  due  and  eternal  result  of  labour,  right- 
eousness, veracity  ? — Happiness.  And  how  are  we 
drawn  to  them  by  one  who,  instead  of  making  us  feel  30 
that  with  them  is  happiness,  tells  us  that  perhaps  we 
were  predestined  not  to  be  happy  but  to  be  unhappy  ? 


EMERSON.  291 

You  will  find,  in  especial,  many  earnest  preachers  of 
our  popular  religion  to  be  fervent  in  their  praise  and 
admiration  of  Carlyle.  His  insistence  on  labour, 
righteousness,  and  veracity,  pleases  them  ;  his  con- 
5  tempt  for  happiness  pleases  them  too.  I  read  the 
other  day  a  tract  against  smoking,  although  I  do  not 
happen  to  be  a  smoker  myself.  "Smoking,"  said  the 
tract,  "  is  liked  because  it  gives  agreeable  sensations. 
Now  it  is  a  positive  objection  to  a  thing  that  it  gives 
10  agreeable  sensations.  An  earnest  man  will  expressly 
avoid  what  gives  agreeable  sensations."  Shortly  after- 
wards I  was  inspecting  a  school,  and  I  found  the  chil- 
dren reading  a  piece  of  poetry  on  the  common  theme 
that  we  are  here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow.  I  shall 
15  soon  be  gone,  the  speaker  in  this  poem  was  made 
to  say, — 

"  And  I  shall  be  glad  to  go, 
For  the  world  at  best  is  a  dreary  place, 
And  my  life  is  getting  low." 

20  How  usual  a  language  of  popular  religion  that  is,  on 
our  side  of  the  Atlantic  at  any  rate  !  But  then  our 
popular  religion,  in  disparaging  happiness  here  below, 
knows  very  well  what  it  is  after.  It  has  its  eye  on  a 
happiness   in   a  future  life  above  the   clouds,  in  the 

25  New  Jerusalem,  to  be  won  by  disliking  and  rejecting 
happiness  here  on  earth.  And  so  long  as  this  ideal 
stands  fast  it  is  very  well.  But  for  very  many  it  now 
stands  fast,  no  longer  ;  for  Carlyle,  at  any  rate,  it  had 
failed  and  vanished.     Happiness  in  labour,  righteous- 

3oness,  and  veracity, — in  the  life  of  the  spirit, — here  was 
a  gospel  still  for  Carlyle  to  preach,  and  to  help  others 
by   preaching.     But   he  baffled  them  and  himself  by 


*92  EMERSON. 

preferring  the  paradox  that  we  are  not  born  for  hap- 
piness at  all. 

Happiness  in  labour,  righteousness,  and  veracity  ; 
in  all  the  life  of  the  spirit  ;  happiness  and  eternal 
hope  ; — that  was  Emerson's  gospel.  I  hear  it  said  5 
that  Emerson  was  too  sanguine  ;  that  the  actual  gen- 
eration in  America  is  not  turning  out  so  well  as  he  ex- 
pected. Very  likely  he  was  too  sanguine  as  to  the 
near  future  ;  in  this  country  it  is  difficult  not  to  be  too 
sanguine.  Very  possibly  the  present  generation  may  10 
prove  unworthy  of  his  high  hopes  ;  even  several  gen- 
erations succeeding  this  may  prove  unworthy  of  them. 
But  by  his  conviction  that  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  is 
happiness,  and  by  his  hope  that  this  life  of  the  spirit 
will  come  more  and  more  to  be  sanely  understood,  ts 
and  to  prevail,  and  to  work  for  happiness, — by  this 
conviction  and  hope  Emerson  was  great,  and  he  will 
surely  prove  in  the  end  to  have  been  right  in  them. 
In  this  country  it  is  difficult,  as  I  said,  not  to  be  san- 
guine. Very  many  of  your  writers  are  over-sanguine,  20 
and  on  the  wrong  grounds.  But  you  have  two  men 
who  in  what  they  have  written  show  their  sanguineness 
in  a  line  where  courage  and  hope  are  just,  where  they 
are  also  infinitely  important,  but  where  they  are  not 
easy.  The  two  men  are  Franklin  and  Emerson.1 25 
These  two  are,  I  think,  the  most  distinctively  and 
honourably  American  of  your  writers  ;  they  are  the 
most    original    and    the    most    valuable.     Wise    men 

1  I  found    with    pleasure    that    this    conjunction  of  Emerson's 
name  with  Franklin's  had  already  occurred  to  an  accomplished  30 
writer  and  delightful   man,  a  friend  of  Emerson,  left  almost  the 


EMERSON:  293 

everywhere  know  that  we  must  keep  up  our  courage 
and  hope  ;  they  know  that  hope  is,  as  Wordsworth 
well  says, — 

"  The  paramount  duty  which  Heaven  lays, 
5  For  its  own  honour,  on  man's  suffering  heart." 

But  the  very  word  duty  points  to  an  effort  and  a  strug- 
gle to  maintain  our  hope  unbroken.  Franklin  and 
Emerson  maintained  theirs  with  a  convincing  ease, 
an  inspiring'joy.     Franklin's  confidence  in  the  happi- 

ioness  with  which  industry,  honesty,  and  economy  will 
crown  the  life  of  this  work-day  world,  is  such  that  he 
runs  over  with  felicity.  With  a  like  felicity  does 
Emerson  run  over,  when  he  contemplates  the  happi- 
ness eternally  attached   to  the  true  life  in  the  spirit. 

15  You  cannot  prize  him  too  much,  nor  heed  him  too 
diligently.  He  has  lessons  for  both  the  branches  of 
our  race.  I  figure  him  to  my  mind  as  visible  upon 
earth  still,  as  still  standing  here  by  Boston  Bay,  or  at 
his   own    Concord,    in    his  habit  as  he  lived,  but  of 

20  sole  survivor,  alas  !  of  the  famous  literary  generation  of  Boston, — 
Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  Dr.  Holmes  has  kindly  allowed 
me  to  print  here  the  ingenious  and  interesting  lines,  hitherto  un- 
published, in  which  he  speaks  of  Emerson  thus  : — 

"  Where  in  the  realm  of  thought,  whose  air  is  song, 
25  Does  he,  the  Buddha  of  the  West,  belong? 

He  seems  a  winged  Franklin,  sweetly  wise, 
Born  to  unlock  the  secret  of  the  skies  ; 
And  which  the  nobler  calling — if  'tis  fair 
Terrestrial  with  celestial  to  compare — 
30  To  guide  the  storm-cloud's  elemental  flame, 

Or  walk  the  chambers  whence  the  lightning  came 

Amidst  the  sources  of  its  subtile  fire, 

And  steal  their  effluence  for  his  lips  and  lyre  ? 


294  EMERSON. 

heightened  stature  and  shining  feature,  with  one  hand 
stretched  out  towards  the  East,  to  our  laden  and 
labouring  England;  the  other  towards  the  ever-growing 
West,  to  his  own  dearly-loved  America, — "great,  intel- 
ligent, sensual,  avaricious  America."  To  us  he  shows  5 
for  guidance  his  lucid  freedom,  his  cheerfulness  and 
hope  ;  to  you  his  dignity,  delicacy,  serenity,  elevation. 
— Discourses  in  America,  ed.  1896,  pp.  138-207. 


NOTES. 

I. —  The  Function  of  Criticism.  This  essay  stands  first 
in  Arnold's  Essays  in  Criticism  :  First  Series  (1865).  It 
may  be  regarded  as  a  "programme"  of  Arnold's  subse- 
quent prose  writing.  It  suggests  nearly  all  the  various 
uses  to  which  he  afterward  turned  criticism:  his  applica- 
tion of  it  to  social  conditions,  to  science,  to  philosophy,  and 
to  religion,  as  well  as  to  literature.  Properly  read,  it  has 
also  something  to  say  of  the  causes  that  gradually  led 
Arnold  away  from  poetry  to  prose. 

1  :  4. — /  said.  See  On  Translating  Homer,  ed.  1883, 
p.  199. 

1  :  20. — Mr.    Shairp's  excellent    notice.     An    essay    on 
Wordsworth:   The  Man  and  the  Poet,  that  appeared  in 

the  North  British  Review  for  August,  1864,  vol.  xli. 
"  Mr.  Shairp  "  was  in  1865  Professor  of  Humanity  at  the 
United  College  in  St.  Andrews  University,  In  186S  he 
was  made  Principal  of  the  College.  In  1877  he  became 
Professor  of  Poetry  in  the  University  of  Oxford.  He  is 
best  remembered  by  a  series  of  lectures  delivered  at 
Oxford  on  Aspects  of  Poetry  (188 1).  On  the  Poetic  Inter- 
pretation of  Nature  had  appeared  in  1877.  He  died  in 
1885. 

2  :  5. —  Wordsworth,  .  .  .  in  one  of  his  letters.  See 
Memoirs  of  William  Wordsworth,  ed.  TS51,  ii.  51.  The 
passage  occurs  in  a  letter  of  1816  to  the  Quaker  poet, 
Bernard  Barton  (Lamb's  friend  and  correspondent),  who, 
on  the  appearance  of  the  Excursion,  had  "addressed 
some  verses  to  Wordsworth  expressing  his  own  admiration, 
unabated  by  the  strictures  of  the  reviewers." 

3  :  16. — Irenes.     Johnson's  play  of  Irene  was  produced 

295 


296  NOTES. 

in  1749.  "  One  of  the  heaviest  and  most  unreadable  of 
dramatic  performances;  interesting  now,  if  interesting  at 
all,  solely  as  a  curious  example  of  the  result  of  bestowing 
great  powers  upon  a  totally  uncongenial  task.  .  .  The 
play  was  carried  through  nine  nights  by  Garrick's  friendly 
zeal,  so  that  the  author  had  his  three  nights'  profits.  .  . 
When  asked  how  he  felt  upon  his  ill-success,  he  replied  : 
'  Like  the  monument.'  "  Leslie  Stephen's  Johnson  (Eng- 
lish Men  of  Letters  Series),  p.  36. 

3  :  17. — Lives  of  the  Poets.  In  these  Lives  (1779-81) 
Johnson  is  at  his  best.  His  wide  and  accurate  informa- 
tion, vigorous  understanding,  and  strong  common  sense 
give  his  judgments  permanent  value,  despite  the  limita- 
tions of  the  eighteenth-century  horizon. 

3  :  19.—  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets.  This  series  of  132  son- 
nets (1821-22)  deals  with  the  history  of  the  Church  in 
England  "  from  the  introduction  of  Christianity  "  to  "  the 
present  times."  Despite  Arnold's  sneer,  several  of  the 
sonnets — notably  those  on  Cranmer  and  on  Walton's  Book 
of  Lives— are  in  Wordsworth's  best  manner. 

3  :  20. — Celebrated  Preface.  The  allusion  is  to  the 
Preface  prefixed  to  the  second  edition  (1800)  of  the  Lyrical 
Ballads.  Passages  in  the  Preface  remain  among  the  most 
suggestive  and  memorable  things  that  have  been  said  of 
poetry.  "  Poetry  is  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all 
knowledge;  it  is  the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in 
the  countenance  of  all  science."  .  .  "The  remotest  dis- 
coveries of  the  chemist,  the  botanist,  or  mineralogist  will 
be  as  proper  objects  of  the  poet's  art  as  any  upon  which  it 
can  be  employed;  if  the  time  should  ever  come  when  these 
things  shall  be  familiar  to  us,  and  the  relations  under 
which  they  are  contemplated  by  the  followers  of  these 
respective  sciences  shall  be  manifestly  and  palpably  mate- 
rial to  us  as  enjoying  and  suffering  beings;  if  the  time 
should  ever  come  when  what  is  now  called  science,  thus 
familiarized  to  men,  shall  be  ready  to  put  on,  as  it  were, 
a  form  of  flesh  and  blood,  the  poet  will  lend  his  divine 
spirit  to  aid  the  transfiguration,  and  will  welcome   the 


NOTES.  297 

Being  thus  produced  as  a  dear  and  genuine  inmate  of  the 
household  of  man."  Wordsworth's  Lyrical  Ballads,  3d 
ed.,  London,  1802,  pp.  xxxvii  and  xxxix. 

3  :  23. — Goethe.  The  student  should  specially  note  the 
recurrence  of  Goethe's  name  throughout  this  "  pro- 
gramme "  of  Arnold's  critical  work.  Cf.  Introduction, 
p.  lxxix. 

6  :  n. —  Too  abstract.  Cf.  Selections,  p.  36,  1.  24,  and 
Introduction,  pp.  xliii-xlix. 

8  :  20. — No  national  glow  of  life  and  thought.  Cf.  Kuno 
Francke's  Social  Forces  in  German  Literature,  p.  528. 
"  There  is  a  deep  pathos  in  the  fact  that  the  principal 
character  of  the  play  with  which  Goethe  in  1815  celebrated 
the  final  triumph  of  the  German  cause  should  have  been  a 
dim  figure  of  Greek  antiquity — Epimenides,  the  legendary 
sage  who  awakens  from  a  sleep  of  long  years  to  find  himself 
alone  among  a  people  whose  battles  he  has  not  fought, 
whose  pangs  he  has  not  shared." 

10  :  13. —  The  old  woman.  On  July  23,  1637,  the  attempt 
was  made  in  St.  Giles's  Church,  Edinburgh,  to  read  the 
new  service  prescribed  by  Charles  I.  for  Scotland.  A  dan- 
gerous riot  followed.  According  to  tradition,  the  riot  was 
started  by  one  Jenny  Geddes,  who  threw  her  stool  at  the 
Dean's  head,  crying  out,  "  Villain,  dost  thou  say  mass  at 
my  lug!  "  The  latest  authorities  regard  Jenny  as  legend- 
ary.    See  Burton's  History  of  Scotland  (1S73),  vi.  150, 

12  :  i.—Joubert.  See  Pense'es  de  J.  Joubert,  Paris, 
1869,  i.  178.  The  sentence  quoted  is  the  second  aphorism 
under  Titre  xv.—De  la  liberie" ,  de  la  justice  et  des  lois. 

12  :  31. — Burke.  For  representative  extracts  from 
Burke's  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France,  see  Bliss 
Perry's  Selections  from  Burke  (1S96),  pp.  143-202. 

13  :  23. — Dr.  Price.  Richard  Price,  D.  D.  (1723-91), 
long  a  preacher  at  various  meeting-houses  in  Hackney, 
London,  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  English  advocates 
of  the  "  Rights  of  Man."  Because  of  his  defense  of  the 
American  revolutionists  he  was  in  1788  invited  by  Congress 
to  "  come  and  reside  among  a  people  who  knew  how  to 


298  NOTES. 

appreciate  his  talents."  From  17S9  to  1791  he  defended 
vigorously  in  England  the  new  order  of  things  in  France. 

13  :  29. — "  To  party  gave  up."  From  Goldsmith's  epi- 
taph (in  Retaliation)  on  "  good  Edmund." 

15  :  6 — Lord  Auckland.  William  Eden  (1744-1814),  was 
in  1785  Pitt's  special  envoy  for  the  negotiation  of  an  im- 
portant treaty  with  France.  During  the  next  few  years 
he  was  of  the  utmost  service  to  Pitt  through  his  skillful 
conduct  of  many  pieces  of  diplomatic  business.  He 
received  a  peerage  as  Baron  Auckland  in  1789. 

15  :  28. — Curiosity.  Cf.  what  Arnold  says,  in  1867,  on 
this  same  point  in  his  lecture  on  Culture  and  its  Enemies, 
a  lecture  that  later  became  chap.  i.  of  Culture  and  A7iar- 
<r/£/(i869).     See  Selections,  pp.  147-148. 

19:15. —  77/i?  Home  and  Foreign  Review.  Published 
in  London  from  1862  to  1864. 

20  :  15. — Sir  Charles  Adderley.  A  Conservative  states- 
man, who  held  important  offices  in  the  Colonial  and  Edu- 
cational Departments,  under  Lord  Derby,  1858-59  and 
1866-6S. 

20  :  24. — Mr.  Roebuck.  Member  for  Sheffield  and  a 
typical  representative  in  1S65  of  the  advanced  Liberal 
party.     Cf.   Selections,  p.  173,  1.  9. 

21  :  4. — "  D  is  IVenige."  From  Goethe's  Iphigenie  auf 
Tauris,  I.  ii.  91-92. 

24:  2. — Detachment.  For  the  Indian  Buddhist,  the  per- 
fect life  involves  withdrawal  from  the  world,  "  habitual 
silence,"  and  severe  "meditation."  Cf.  J.  Barthelemy 
Saint-Hilaire's  The  Buddha  and  his  Religion,  translated 
by  Laura  Ensor,  London,  1895,  pp.  160-161. 

25  :  17. — Lord  Somcrs  (1650-1716).  The  great  cham- 
pion of  the  English  Constitution  as  determined  by  the 
Revolution  of  16S8.  See  the  brilliant  characterization  of 
Somers  in  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  chap.  xx. 

25  :  18. — Philistines.  See  Selections  and  Notes,  pp.  132 
and  139. 

25  :  iS. — Cobbett.  William  Cobbett  (1762-1S35)  was  one 
of  the  most  violent  of  English  democratic  agitators.     He 


NOTES.  299 

was  in  America  for  a  time,  and  from  1796  to  1801  published 
in  Philadelphia  Peter  Porcupine's  Gazette.  On  his  re- 
turn to  England  he  took  back  with  him  what  was  left  of 
Tom  Paine.  He  was  Member  of  Parliament  from  1S32 
to  1835.  For  Heine's  opinion  of  Cobbett  see  Selections, 
p.  142.  Cobbett  was  continually  producing  newspaper 
articles  and  pamphlets,  and  was  also  author  of  many  pre- 
tentious works.  He  wrote  on  a  large  variety  of  subjects  : 
English  grammar,  European  politics,  English  party  poli- 
tics, economic  problems,  religion,  the  Reformation.  A 
collected  edition  of  some  of  his  more  permanently  valuable 
writings  on  politics  was  issued  in  six  volumes  by  his  sons 
in  1835.  In  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature  {Selections, 
p.  02),  Arnold  speaks  of  "  Cobbett's  sinewy,  idiomatic 
English." 

25  :  23.— Latter-Day  Pamphlets.  The  first  of  these 
was  published  in  February,  1850.  While  admitting  the 
inevitableness  of  Democracy,  they  attacked  many  popular 
democratic  superstitions,  and  urged  that  all  men  devote 
themselves  to  honest  work  and  give  over  cheap  oratory 
and  political  agitations. 

25  :  24. — Mr.  Ruskin.  See,  for  example,  Mr.  Ruskin's 
Fors  Clavigcra. 

27  :  6. — Obermann.  See  Senancour's  Obermann,  ed. 
1863,  Letter  xc: — "  L'homme  est  perissable. — II  se  peut ; 
mais  perissons  en  resistant,  et,  si  le  neant  nous  est  reserve, 
ne  faisons  pas  que  ce  soit  une  justice."  '  Man  is  doomed  to 
perish. — It  may  be  so;  but  let  us  perish  while  resisting,  and, 
if  nothingness  awaits  us,  let  us  ensure  that  it  be  not  a  just 
apportionment.'  Arnold's  writings  contain  many  admiring 
allusions  to  Senancour  (1770-1846).  Obermann  (1804)  is  the 
story  of  a  dreamer  of  delicately  romantic  temperament, 
recited  through  a  series  of  letters  that  are  exquisite  in 
phrase  and  in  imaginative  quality.  Spiritual,  philosophic, 
religious,  and  artistic  problems  come  up  for  finely  melan- 
choly moralizing,  and  there  is  much  sensitive  transcription 
from  nature.  Amiel  seems  to  have  been  an  attempt  on 
the  part  of  the  world-order  to  realize  Obermann. 


300  NOTES. 

27  :  10. — Bishop  Colenso.  The  first  volume  of  his  The 
Pentateuch  and  Book  of  Joshua  Critically  Examined  was 
published  in  1862.  It  urged  the  "impossibility  of  regard- 
ing the  Mosaic  story  as  a  true  narrative  of  actual  historical 
matters  of  fact."  Arnold's  essay  on  Colenso  bore  the  title 
The  Bishop  and  the  Philosopher  (the  philosopher  is 
Spinoza),  and  appeared  in  AT ac  mi  Han's  Magazine  for 
January,  1863.  Arnold  found  Colenso's  book  not  spirit- 
ually edifying  for  the  uninstructed,  and  too  cheap  in  its 
scholarship  and  methods  for  people  of  real  cultivation. 
Colenso  was  Bishop  of  Natal ;  he  died  in  1883. 

28  :  3. — Joubert.  See  Pensees  de  J.  Joubert,  ed.  1869,  i. 
311,  Titre  xxiii.,  Des  Oualites  de  I'i'crivain.  "  L'ignor- 
ance,  qui,  en  morale,  attenue  la  faute,  est,  elle-meme,  en 
litterature,  une  faute  capitale." 

28  :  12. — Dr.  Stanley.  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley,  Dean 
of  Westminster.  Cf.  274  :  25.  The  book  in  question  is  The 
Bible :  Its  Form  and  its  Substance  (1863).  It  admits  the 
indefensibility  of  the  theory  of  literal  inspiration,  but  con- 
tends that  in  the  study  of  the  Scriptures  "  the  main  end  to 
be  sought  is  an  increased  acquaintance  with  the  Bible,  and 
increased  appreciation  of  its  instruction." 

28  :  23. — Eighty  and  odd  pigeons.  The  allusion  is  to  one 
of  the  mathematical  problems  by  which  Bishop  Colenso 
would  discredit  the  Pentateuch.  Arnold's  account  in  his 
Macmillan  article  of  this  particular  problem  is  as  follows  : 
"  If  three  priests  have  to  eat  264  pigeons  a  day,  how  many 
must  each  priest  eat?    That  disposes  of  Leviticus." 

29  :  1. — A  lady.  Frances  Power  Cobbe  (b.  1822).  She 
has  been  very  influential  as  a  writer  for  periodicals,  as  a 
lecturer  on  social  topics,  as  an  advocate  of  women's  rights, 
and  of  late  years  as  an  opponent  of  vivisection.  She  has 
written  much  on  religion  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  theist 
and  Unitarian. 

29  :  5. — AT.  Penan's  (1823-92)  book  was  the  famous  Vie 
de  Jesus  (1863).  Of  Renan's  many  works  on  Hebrew  lit- 
erature the  best  known  is  the  elaborate  Histoire  des 
Origines  du  Chrislianisme,  of  which  the  prefatory  volume 


NOTES.  301 

was  the    Vie  de  Jhus.     Later  volumes  were  Les  Apotres 
(1S66),  I'L^glise  chretienne  (1879). 

29:  11. — "  Has  been  given  the  strength.''''  The  quota- 
tion conies  from 'p.  134  of  Miss  Cobbe's  Broken  Lights 
(1864),  a  book  in  which,  as  Matthew  Arnold  has  just  noted, 
she  makes  a  general  "  survey  of  the  religious  state  of 
Europe." 

29  :  20. — Dr.  Strauss 's  book.  Strauss  (1808-74)  published 
his  original  Life  of  fesas  ("  Das  Leben  Jesu,  kritisch 
bearbeitet ")  in  1835.  His  attempt  was  to  account  for  the 
miraculous  element  in  New  Testament  story  as  the  product 
of  the  myth-making  popular  imagination  working  under  the 
influence  of  the  Messianic  ideal.  He  published,  in  1864, 
a  popular  edition  of  his  "  Leben  Jesu,"  with  the  title  "  Das 
Leben  Jesu  ;  fur  das  Deutsche  Volk  bearbeitet."  This  is 
the  book  alluded  to  in  the  text.  The  earlier  book,  it  may  be 
noted,  was  translated  into  English  by  George  Eliot  in  1846. 

30  :  16. — Nemo  doctus.  See  Cicero's  Alt.,  xv.  7 : 
"  Nemo  doctus  umquam  (multa  autem  de  hoc  genere 
scripta  sunt)  mutationem  consilii,  inconstantiam  dixit 
esse." 

30  :  20. — Coleridge's  .  .  .  phrase.  See  Coleridge's  Con- 
fessions of  an  Inquiring  Spirit :  "  In  my  last  letter  I  said 
that  in  the  Bible  there  is  more  that  finds  me  than  I  have 
experienced  in  all  other  books  put  together ;  that  the 
words  of  the  Bible  find  me  at  greater  depths  of  my  being  ; 
and  that  whatever  finds  me  brings  with  it  an  irresistible 
evidence  of  its  having  proceeded  from  the  Holy  Spirit." 
Letter  II. 

31  :  10. — Religious  Duty.  Published  in  1864  ;  a  kind  of 
Unitarian  guide  to  spirituality  and  morality. 

33  '•  31. — Bossuet's  philosophy  of  history.  In  his  Dis- 
cours  sur  I'histoire  universe! le  (1681)  Bossuet,  though 
attaining  something  like  a  conception  of  the  continuity  of 
history,  nevertheless  explains  the  course  of  events  as 
divinely  directed  in  rather  obviously  providential  ways  for 
the  benefit  of  Christianity  in  general  and  of  the  Roman 
Church  in  particular.     Arnold's  point  is,  of   course,  that 


3°2  NOTES, 

what  was  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  doctrine  of  the 
Reformation,  "  Luther's  theory  of  grace,"  is,  when  judged 
by  philosophical  standards,  no  more  satisfactory  as  a  piece 
of  theorizing  than  Bossuet's  attempt  to  expound  all  history 
as  merely  preparing  the  way  for  the  ecclesiasticism  of  the 
age  of  Louis  Quatorze. 

34  :  i. — Bishop  of  Durham 's.  In  1865  the  Bishop  of 
Durham  was  Charles  Baring,  a  prelate  of  whom  nothing 
seems  preserved  beyond  the  historical  fact  of  his  prelacy. 

35  :  10. — Ab  integro.  From  Vergil's  Eclogues,  iv.  5  ; 
best  translated  by  a  line  from  Shelley's  Hellas,  "  The 
world's  great  age  begins  anew." 

40. — On  Translating  Homer.  Matthew  Arnold  was 
made  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford  in  1857.  He  pub- 
lished, in  1858,  Merope,  a  tragedy,  in  imitation  of  the 
Greek  ;  the  preface  expounded  the  theory  of  Greek 
tragedy.  In  i860  he  began  a  special  series  of  three  lec- 
tures on  translating  Homer.  In  a  letter  dated  October  29, 
i860,  he  writes:  "  I  am  in  full  work  at  my  lecture  on 
Homer,  which  you  have  seen  advertised  in  the  Times. 
I  give  it  next  Saturday.  I  shall  try  to  lay  down  the  true 
principles  on  which  a  translation  of  Homer  should  be 
founded,  and  I  shall  give  a  few  passages  translated  by 
myself  to  add  practice  to  theory.  This  is  an  off  lecture, 
given  partlv  because  I  have  long  had  in  my  mind  some- 
thing to  say  about  Homer,  partly  because  of  the  com- 
plaints that  I  did  not  enough  lecture  on  poetry.  I  shall 
still  give  the  lecture,  continuing  my  proper  course,  toward 
the  end  of  the  term."  Letters,  i.  145-146.  These  lectures 
were  published  in  1861.  The  Selection,  pp.  40-66,  is  the 
entire  first  lecture. 

40. — Nunquamne  reponam?    See  Juvenal's  Satires,  i.  1  : 

"  Semper  ego  auditor  tantum?    Numquamne  reponam 
Vexatus  toties  ranci  Theseide  Cordi?  " 
'  Shall  I  be  always  a  hearer  only  ?    Shall  I  be  vexed  so  often  by 
the  T/ieseis  of  husky-voiced  Cordus  and  never  take  revenge  ? ' 

40  :  16. — Professor  Newman.  Francis  W.  Newman 
(b.  1805),  brother  of  Cardinal  Newman,  studied  at  Oxford 


NOTES.  3°3 

and,  after  various  experiences  as  tutor  and  traveler,  was, 
in  1846,  made  Professor  of  Latin  in  University  College, 
London  ;  he  resigned  this  position  in  1863.  His  translation 
of  the  Iliad  was  published  in  1856.  Professor  Newman 
has  written  essays  and  treatises  on  a  wide  range  of  subjects 
from  theology  and  elementary  geometry  to  Arabic.  His 
scholarship  is  universally  admitted  ;  his  poetic  accomplish- 
ments may  be  judged  from  the  following  extract  from  his 
Iliad: 

"  Achilles,  image  of  the  gods  !  thy  proper  sire  remember, 

Who  on  the  deadly  steps  of  Eld  far  on  like  me  is  carried. 

And  haply  him  the  dwellers-round  with  many  an  outrage  harry, 

Nor  standeth  any  by  his  side  to  ward  annoy  and  ruin. 

Yet  doth  he  verily,  I  wis,  while  thee  alive  he  learneth 

Joy  in  his  soul,  and  every  day  the  hope  within  him  cherish, 

His  loved  offspring  to  behold,  returned  from  land  of  Troas." 

— Iliad,  xxiv.  486-492. 

The  measure  is  the  septenarius,  with  feminine  ending — 
i.  e.,  the  seven-foot  Iambic  line,  ending  with  an  unaccented 
extra  syllable.  There  is  no  rhyme.  Chapman  in  his 
translation  of  Homer  uses  rhyming  seven-foot  Iambic 
lines,  ending  in  an  accented  syllable. 

40  :  17. — Mr.  Wright.  See  "  The  Iliad  of  Homer, 
translated  into  blank  verse,  by  I.  C.  Wright,  M.  A.,  trans- 
lator of  Dante;  late  Fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford." 
London,  1861. 

41  :  14. — Mr.  Newman  declares.  The  passage  occurs  in 
the  preface  to  Newman's  Iliad. 

43  :  l3- — Bentley.  See  J.  H.  Monk's  Life  of  Bentley, 
London,  1830,  p.  626:  "  The  common  story  of  his  having 
told  Pope,  whom  he  met  at  Bishop  Atterbury's  table 
shortly  after  the  publication  of  his  translation  of  the  Iliad, 
'  that  it  was  a  very  pretty  poem,  but  that  he  must  not  call 
it  Homer,'  is  told  in  different  forms;  and  its  truth  is  very 
probable,  from  his  having  himself,  when  asked  in  his  latter 
days  what  had  been  the  cause  of  Pope's  dislike,  replied: 
'  I  talked  against  his  Homer;  and  the  portentous  cub 
never  forgives.'  " 


304  NOTES. 

43  :  17. — 'fis  hv  6  4>p6vinos  dpiveiev.  This  famous  definition 
of  the  standard  of  excellence  in  an  art  comes  from  Aristotle  s 
Nichomachcean  Ethics,  II.,  vi.  15. 

45  :  24. —  Voss.  The  translation  of  the  Odyssey  was  pub- 
lished in  1 781;  that  of  the  Iliad,  with  the  revised  Odyssey, 
in  1793. 

46  :  15. — Article  on  English  translations  of  Homer.  See 
the  National  Review  for  October,  i860,  vol.  xi.  p.  283. 

47  :  3.  The  most  delicate  of  living  critics.  Of  course, 
Sainte-Beuve.  Cf.  Arnold's  Letters,  i.  155,  where  he 
calls  Sainte-Beuve  "  the  first  of  living  critics." 

48:6. — Cowpcr.  His  Homer  was  published  in  1791;  a 
revised  edition  with  many  alterations  appeared  in  1802, 
after  his  death. 

48  :  9.—  Mr.  Sotheby.  William  Sotheby's  (1757-1833) 
translation  of  the  Iliad  into  heroic  couplets  was  published 
ini83i;  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  with  seventy-five  de- 
signs  by  John  Flaxman,  were  published  in  1834. 

48  :  11. — Chapman.  Parts  of  the  Iliad  appeared  in  1598; 
the  entire  Iliad  about  161 1;  half  the  Odyssey  in  1614;  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  together  in  1616.  His  measure, 
as  already  noted,  is  the  septenarius,  with  masculine  end- 
ing; the  verses  rhyme  in  couplets.  The  measure  had  been 
largely  used  in  ballads.     Cf.  60  :  10. 

51  :  23. — Our  pre-Raphaelite  school.  See  Mr.  Ruskin's 
Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting,  Lecture  IV., 
Pre-Raphaelitism:  "  Pre-Raphaelitism  has  but  one  prin- 
ciple— that  of  absolute,  uncompromising  truth  in  all  that  it 
does,  obtained  by  working  everything,  down  to  the  most 
minute  detail,  from  nature,  and  from  nature  only.  Every 
pre-Raphaelite  landscape  background  is  painted  to  the  last 
touch,  in  the  open  air,  from  the  thing  itself.  Every  pre- 
Raphaelite  figure,  however  studied  in  expression,  is  a  true 
portrait  of  some  living  person.  Every  minute  accessory  is 
painted  in  the  same  manner.  .  .  The  habit  of  constantly 
carrying  everything  up  to  the  utmost  point  of  completion 
deadens  the  pre-Raphaelites  in  general  to  the  merits  of 
men  who,  with  an  equal  love  of  truth  up  to  a  certain  point, 


NOTES.  305 

yet  express  themselves  habitually  with  speed  and  power, 
rather  than  with  finish,  and  give  abstracts  of  truth  rather 
than  total  truth."  Further  discussions  of  pre-Raphael- 
itism  may  be  found  in  Robert  de  la  Sizeranne's  La  Pein- 
ture  Anglaise  Contemporaine  (Paris,  1895),  Harry  Quilter's 
Preferences  in  Art,  Knight's  Life  of  Rossetti,  Sharp's  Life 
of  Rossetti,  William  Bell  Scott's  Reminiscences,  and  in  an 
article  of  F.  G.  Stephen's  in  the  Portfolio,  1894. 

54:10 — Robert  Wood  (1716-71).  He  traveled  widely 
in  the  Orient  in  the  interests  of  history  and  archaeology, 
and  published  two  famous  illustrated  works  on  Eastern 
antiquities  :  The  Ruins  of  Palmyra,  1753  ;  The  Ruins  of 
Balbec,  1757.  He  was  called  Palmyra  Wood  ;  cf.  Athen- 
ian Stewart. 

57  :  6. — Rasselas.  In  Rasselas,  Prince  of  Abyssinia 
(1759),  the  Latinized  style  of  Johnson  and  his  trifoliate 
sentence  structure  is  luxuriantly  developed.  The  dia- 
logues as  well  as  the  author's  own  moralizings  are  all  in 
polysyllables  and  periodic  sentences.  "  The  little  fishes 
talk  like  whales." 

58  :  20.—"  With  his  eye  on  the  object:''  The  phrase  first 
occurs  in  a  letter  of  1805  to  Scott,  who  was  planning  an 
edition  of  Dryden.  See  Memoirs  of  William  Wordsworth, 
by  Christopher  Wordsworth  (ed.  Boston,  1851),  i.  317. 
"  Dryden  had  neither  a  tender  heart  nor  a  lofty  sense  of 
moral  dignity.  Whenever  his  language  is  poetically  im- 
passioned, it  is  mostly  upon  unpleasing  subjects,  such  as 
the  follies,  vices,  and  crimes  of  classes  of  men,  or  of  indi- 
viduals. That  his  cannot  be  the  language  of  imagination 
must  have  necessarily  followed  from  this  ;  that  there  is 
not  a  single  image  from  nature  in  the  whole  body  of 
his  works ;  and  in  his  translation  from  Virgil,  when- 
ever Virgil  can  be  fairly  said  to  have  his  eye  upon  his 
object,  Dryden  always  spoils  the  passage."  See  also 
in  Wordsworth's  Essay,  Supplementary  to  the  Preface 
(1815),  his  famous  comment  on  the  artificiality  of  the 
eighteenth-century  treatment  of  nature  :  "  Excepting  the 
nocturnal  Reverie  of  Lady  Winchelsea,  and  a  passage  or 


306  NOTES. 

two  in  the  Windsor  Forest  of  Pope,  the  poetry  of  the  period 
intervening  between  the  publication  of  the  Paradise  Lost 
and  the  Seasons  does  not  contain  a  single  new  image  of 
external  nature,  and  scarcely  presents  a  familiar  one  from 
which  it  can  be  inferred  that  the  eye  of  the  Poet  had  been 
steadily  fixed  upon  his  object."  Wordsworth's  Poetical 
Works,  ed.  John  Morley,  1890,  p.  870. 

59:  17. — Fourteen-sy liable  line.     Cf.  40:  16  and  48  :  11. 

60  :  10. — Keats 's  fine  sonnet. 

"Much  have  I  travell'd  in  the  realms  of  gold, 

And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen  ; 
Round  many  Western  islands  have  I  been 

Which  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  hold. 

Oft  of  one  wide  expanse  had  I  been  told 
That  deep-brovv'd  Homer  ruled  as  his  demesne  : 
Yet  did  I  never  breathe  its  pure  serene 

Till  I  heard  Chapman  speak  out  loud  and  bold. 

Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken  ; 

Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 
He  stared  at  the  Pacific— and  all  his  men 

Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise- 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 

Mr.  Swinburne's  praise  of  this  sonnet  should  not  be  for- 
gotten :  "  While  anything  of  English  poetry  shall  endure 
the  sonnet  of  Keats  will  be  the  final  word  of  comment,  the 
final  note  of  verdict  on  Chapman's  Homer."  Chapman's 
Works  (ed.  London,  1875),  vol.  ii.  p.  lvii. 

60 :  13. — Coleridge.  See  his  Miscellanies,  Aesthetic 
and  Literary,  ed.  1885,  p.  289,  Chapman 's  Homer:  "It 
is  as  truly  an  original  poem  as  the  Faery  Queene  ; — it  will 
give  you  small  idea  of  Homer,  though  a  far  truer  one  than 
Pope's  epigrams,  or  Cowper's  cumbersome  most  anti-Ho- 
meric Miltonism.  For  Chapman  writes  and  feels  as  a 
poet — as  Homer  might  have  written  had  he  lived  in  Eng- 
land in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  In  short,  it  is  an 
exquisite  poem,  in  spite  of  its  frequent  and  perverse  quaint- 
nesses  and  harshnesses,  which  are,  however,  amply  repaid 
by  almost  unexampled  sweetness  and  beauty  of  language, 
all  over  spirit  and  feeling." 


NOTES.  3°  7 

60:  15. — Mr.  Ha  Ham.  See  his  Liter  xture  of  Europe 
(ed.  New  York,  1874),  ii.  226. 

60  :  17. — Its  latest  editor.  The  allusion  is  to  Rev.  Rich- 
ard Hooper's  edition  of  Chapman's  Homer,  London,  1857. 

62:  10.  — "  Clearesi-souled."  From  Arnold's  sonnet  To 
a  Friend :   Poems,  ed.  1878,  p.  2. 

62  :  12. —  Voltaire.  He  stands  here  as  typical  of  modern 
illumination  and  rationalism. 

62:  14. — "Somewhat  as  one  might  imagine."  These 
words  occur  toward  the  close  of  Pope's  Preface  to  his 
translation  of  the  Iliad. 

62  :  22. — As  Chapman   says  it.     See  the   Commentaries 
at   the   end   of   book    i.   of   Chapman's   Iliad;   Chapman's 
Works,  ed.  R.  H.  Shepherd,  London,  1874-75,  iii.  25. 

66. — Philology  and  Literature.  As  regards  the  general 
significance  of  Arnold's  distrust  of  philology,  see  Introduc- 
tion, pages  xxvii  and  xlv. 

66  :  5. —  To  give  relief.  Cf.  the  preface  to  Cowper's 
Homer,  p.  xv  :  "  It  is  difficult  to  kill  a  sheep  with  dignity  in 
a  modern  language,  to  flay  and  to  prepare  it  for  the  table, 
detailing  every  circumstance  of  the  process.  .  .  Homer, 
who  writes  always  to  the  eye,  with  all  his  sublimity  and 
grandeur,  has  the  minuteness  of  a  Flemish  painter." 

67  :  1.— Mr.  Newman.  In  1861  Professor  Newman  (cf, 
40  :  16)  published  Homeric  Translation  in  Theory  and 
Practice.  A  Reply  to  Matthew  Arnold,  Esq.,  Professor 
of  Poetry  at  Oxford.  In  answer  to  this  Reply  Arnold 
delivered  one  or  two  additional  lectures  on  translating 
Homer  which,  for  the  most  part,  had  to  do  with  Newman's 
arguments,  but  which  also  carried  out  suggestively  some 
new  lines  of  thought.  His  important  discussion  of  Eng- 
lish Hexameters  occurs  in  these  Last  Words.  The  pres- 
ent Selection  comes  from  the  early  part  of  these  additional 
lectures,  which,  with  the  title  Last  Words,  are  printed  at 
the  end  of  the  original  three  lectures. 

68  :  13. — See  Montaigne's  Essais,  livre  II.,  chap,  x., 
Des  Livre s  :  "  Plutarque  est  plus  uniforme  et  constant ; 
Seneque,  plus  ondoyant  et  divers." 


3°8  NOTES. 

71  :  14. — "All  thy  blessed  youth."  See  Measure  for 
Measure,  III.  i.  36. 

74  :  7. — Homer  seemed  to  Sophocles.  As  regards  the 
date  of  the  Homeric  poems,  "the  view  that  the  poems 
were  essentially  in  their  present  condition  before  the 
historical  period  in  Greece  began,  early  in  the  eighth 
century  b.  c,  is  moderate."  Sophocles  lived  from  495  to 
406  b.  c. 

74  :  28. — Pericles  (495-429  B.  C).  The  statesman  who 
ruled  in  Athens  during  the  period  of  its  greatest  artistic 
glory. 

77  :  3. — And  this  is  what  he  knows  !  The  climax  is  cer- 
tainly effective.  The  reader  should  note  the  rhetorical 
ingenuity  with  which  Professor  Newman's  incompetence 
is  thrown  into  relief.  Cf.  the  last  sentence  of  this 
Selection,  p.  82:  "Terrible  learning, — I  cannot  help  in 
my  turn  exclaiming, — terrible  learning,  which  discovers  so 
much  !  " 

79  :  20. — Pullman,  Mr.  Maiden,  and  M.  Penfey. 
Three  well-known  Greek  scholars.  Buttmann  (1 764-1 829) 
was  librarian  of  the  Royal  Library  at  Berlin  and  the 
author  of  various  Greek  grammars.  Mr.  Maiden  (b.  1800) 
long  held  the  chair  of  Greek  in  University  College, 
London.  Theodor  Benfey  (b.  1809)  was  the  author  of 
a  Dictionary  of  Greek  Roots  (1839). 

81  :  5. — Milton's  words.     See  Lycidas,  1.  124. 

81  :  23. —  The  father  in  Sheridan's  play.  See  Sheridan's 
The  Critic,  II.  ii  : 

Governor :  "  No  more  ;  I  would  not  have  thee  plead  in  vain  : 

The  father  softens— but  the  governor 

Isfix'd!" 

81  :  26. — Professor  Max  Mailer.  Corpus  Professor  of 
Comparative  Philology  and  Fellow  of  All  Souls  College 
in  the  University  of  Oxford.  His  best  known  works  are 
Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language  (1859),  and  Chips 
from  a  German  Workshop  (1868-75). 

83  :  15. — Ponum  est.      From  the     Vulgate  :    Matthew, 


NOTES.  3°9 

xvii.  4.  The  disciples  are  on  the  mount  of  transfigura- 
tion ;  Peter  exclaims,  "  Lord,  it  is  good  for  us  to  be  here." 
Arnold,  in  his  Letters  (i.  191),  notes  the  fact  that,  when 
quoting  from  the  Bible,  he  always  uses  the  Vulgate  Latin, 
in  case  he  is  "  not  earnestly  serious." 

83  :  22.— Moriemini  in  peccatis  vestris.  From  the  Vul- 
gate, John  viii.  24. 

84  :  1.—"  Standing  on  earth."  From  Milton's  Paradise 
Lost,  bk.  vii.  23-26. 

84  :  XT,— Definition.  As  regards  Arnold's  distrust  of 
definitions  and  of  all  abstract  discussions  of  literature,  see 
Introduction,  p.  xliii.  ff. 

84  :  22.— Bedeutendes.  This  word  in  the  sense  of  note- 
worthy, or  chargedwith  significance,  was  a  special  favorite 
with  Goethe,  by  whom  it  was  really  made  current.  See 
the  very  long  list  of  quotations  from  Goethe  in  the  Grimms' 
Deutsches  Worterbuch,  under  bedeutend. 

85  :  5. — One  poet.  Shakespeare.  Cf.  the  essay,  A 
French  Critic  on  Milton  in  Mixed  Essays,  p.  200:  "Shakes- 
peare himself,  divine  as  are  his  gifts,  has  not,  of  the  marks 
of  the  master,  this  one  :  perfect  sureness  of  hand  in  his 
style."  Cf.  also  Essays  in  Criticism,  ii.  135:  "Shakes- 
peare frequently  has  lines  and  passages  in  a  strain  quite 
false,  and  which  are  entirely  unworthy  of  him.  But  one 
can  imagine  his  smiling  if  one  could  meet  him  in  the 
Elysian  Fields  and  tell  him  so  ;  smiling  and  replying  that 
he  knew  it  perfectly  well  himself,  and  what  did  it  matter  ?  " 

87  :  4. —  Young.  His  Complaint  or  Night  Thoughts  on 
"  Life,  Death,  and  Immortality,"  was  published  in  1742-45. 

87  :  8. — alibv  a<T(pa\7)s.  See  Pindar's  Pythian  Odes,  iii. 
11.  153-161. 

88  :  7. — Celtic  source.  Arnold  delivered  a  series  of  lec- 
tures at  Oxford  in  1865-66,  on  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature. 
These  lectures  were  published  in  the  Comhill  Magazine 
during  the  first  half  of  1866,  and  issued  as  a  book  in  1867. 
They  are  specially  interesting  as  an  attempt  on  Arnold's 
part  to  apply  the  historical  method  for  the  explanation  of 
the  characteristics  of  English  literature.     Arnold  describes 


310  NOTES. 

the  typical  Celt,  Teuton,  and  Norman,  and  accounts  for  the 
typical  Englishman  as  the  resultant  of  these  types.  English 
literature  he  finds  to  be  the  direct  imaginative  expression  of 
the  various  mental  and  moral  qualities  derived  from  these 
widely  dissimilar  sources.  Despite,  however,  his  nominal 
acceptance  of  the  scientific  and  historical  point  of  view, 
Arnold's  method  is  largely  one  of  divination  and  intuition, 
and  his  accounts  of  the  various  original  types  seem  not  to 
have  been  founded  on  any  thorough  study  of  early  docu- 
ments or  historical  facts.  His  philological  mistakes,  he  has 
in  several  cases  admitted  in  his  notes.  Notwithstanding 
such  shortcomings  this  work  of  Arnold's  has  been  influential 
in  popularizing  the  view  that  accounts  for  literature  scien- 
tifically as  an  expression  of  national  characteristics. 
Taine's  Histoire  de  la  litteratnre  anglaise  had  appeared 
in  1864.  When  Arnold  wrote,  Taine's  book  was — and 
indeed  it  long  remained — the  most  considerable  attempt 
to  explain  an  entire  national  literature  scientifically  in 
terms  of  national  life. 

89  :  7. — Nor  sometimes  forget.  See  Milton's  Paradise 
Lost,  iii.  11.  32-35- 

89  :  12. — Es  bildet  ein  Talent.  See  Goethe's  Tasso, 
I.  ii. 

90  :  2. — Menander  (ca.  340-ca.  290  B.  C).  He  was  the 
foremost  representative  of  the  "  New  Comedy  "  in  Greece. 
He  kept  close  in  his  art  to  real  life  and  portrayed  it  with 
great  truth  and  subtlety.  Of  preceding  dramatists  Eurip- 
ides most  influenced  him.  "O  Life  and  Menander,"  ex- 
claimed the  Grammarian  Aristophanes,  "  which  of  you  two 
imitated  the  other  ?  "  For  an  excellent  contrast  between 
the  Old  and  the  New  Comedy,  see  Coleridge's  Lectures  on 
Shaksfiere,  ed.  1890,  p.  191.  See  also  Mr.  Churton  Col- 
lins's  Essays  and  Studies  (London,  1895)  and  Mr  George 
Meredith's  The  Comic  Spirit  (London,  1897). 

91:31. — Gemeinheit.      'Commonness,    mediocity.'     Cf. 

138  :  9. 

92  :  11. — Cobbetfs  sinewy   .    .    .    English.     Cf.    25  :  18. 
92  :  15. — Bossuet  (1627-1704).     The    famous    Bishop  of 


NOTES.  31* 

Meaux,  called  because  of  his  eloquence  the  "Eagle  of 
Meaux."  Cf.  Arnold's  translation  {Essays,  i.  295)  of  Jou- 
bert's  characterization  of  Bossuet's  style  :  "  Bossuet  em- 
ploys all  our  idioms,  as  Homer  employed  all  the  dialects. 
The  language  of  kings,  of  statesmen,  and  of  warriors  ; 
the  language  of  the  people  and  of  the  student,  of  the  coun- 
try and  of  the  schools,  of  the  sanctuary  and  of  the  courts 
of  law  ;  the  old  and  the  new,  the  trivial  and  the  stately, 
the  quiet  and  the  resounding, — he  turns  all  to  his  use  ; 
and  out  of  all  this  he  makes  a  style,  simple,  grave,  majes- 
tic. His  ideas  are,  like  his  words,  varied, — common  and 
sublime  together.  Times  and  doctrines  in  all  their  multi- 
tude were  ever  before  his  spirit,  as  things  and  words  in  all 
their  multitude  were  ever  before  it.  He  is  not  so  much  a 
man  as  a  human  nature,  with  the  temperance  of  a  saint, 
the  justice  of  a  bishop,  the  prudence  of  a  doctor,  and  the 
might  of  a  great  spirit." 

92:15. — Bolingbroke.  Henry  St.  John  (1678-1751), 
Viscount  Bolingbroke,  the  famous  Tory  statesman  of  the 
time  of  Queen  Anne.  He  was  a  distinguished  patron  of 
literature,  an  intimate  friend  of  Pope's,  who  addresses  him 
in  the  opening  lines  of  the  Epistle  on  Man,  and  a  versa- 
tile writer  on  political,  historical,  and  pseudo-philosophical 
topics.  His  written  style  is  conspicuous  for  its  easy 
strength,  its  well-bred  colloquialism,  and  its  union  of  ad- 
roitness with  apparent  negligence.  Of  his  style  as  an  ora- 
tor, Arnold  speaks  incidentally  in  his  Celtic  Literature : 
"  Stafford,  Bolingbroke,  the  two  Pitts,  Fox, — to  cite  no 
other  names, — I  imagine  few  will  dispute  that  these 
call  up  the  notion  of  an  oratory,  in  kind,  in  extent,  in 
power,  coming  nearer  than  any  other  body  of  modern 
oratory  to  the  oratory  of  Greece  and  Rome."  Celtic  Lit- 
erature, p.  89. 

93  :  22. — Rhyme.  At  present,  scholars  are  pretty  well 
agreed  that  rhyme  "  comes  into  our  poetry  "  from  Proven- 
cal verse  and  the  lyrics  of  the  "  Norman  minstrels."  See 
Gummere's  Handbook  of  Poetics,  153-154.  Cf.  Schipper's 
E ng  Use  he  Metrik,  i.  30-38. 


312  NOTES. 

94  :  ^.—Gwydion.     See  Math  the  son  of  Mathonivy  in 
Lady  Charlotte  Guest's  Mabinogion,  ed.  1849,  iii.  239. 
94  :  20. — Olwen.     See  Kilhwch  and  Olwen,  as  above, 

ii.  275. 

94  :  28. — Peredur.  See  Peredur  the  Son  of  Evrawc,  as 
above,  i.  324. 

95  :  13. — Geraint  and  Enid.  See  Geraint  the  Son  of 
Erbin,  as  above,  ii.  112. 

96:  26. — In  die  sen  Dichtungen,  etc.  'These  poems  are 
full  of  a  weird  moodiness,  and  show  a  marvelous  sympa- 
thy with  nature,  especially  with  plants  and  stones.  The 
reader  feels  as  if  he  were  in  a  magic  forest  ;  he  hears  hid- 
den springs  musically  purling ;  mystical  wild  flowers 
gaze  at  him  with  strange  wistful  eyes  ;  invisible  lips  kiss 
his  cheeks  with  teasing  tenderness ;  great  funguses, 
like  golden  bells,  spring  up  musically  at  the  foot  6f  the 
trees.' 

97 :  i.—Shakspeare's    .    .    .    daffodil.      See     Perdita's 

speech  in  Winter's  Tale,  IV.  iv.  : 

"  Daffodils 
That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 
The  winds  of  March  with  beauty." 

Cf.  Selections,  p.  103. 

97  :  3. —  Wordsworth's  .  .  .  cuckoo.  The  allusion  is 
probably  to  the  famous  stanza  in  the  Solitary  Reaper : 

"  A  voice  so  thrilling  ne'er  was  heard 
In  spring-time  from  the  cuckoo-bird, 
Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides." 

The  Poetical  Works  of  Wordsworth,  ed.  John  Morley, 
p.  192.     Cf.  Selections,  p.  103. 

Possibly,  however,  Arnold  has  in  mind  the  poem  To  the 
Cuckoo;  two  of  its  most  "magical"  stanzas  run  as 
follows : — 

"  Thrice  welcome,  darling  of  the  Spring  1 
Even  yet  thou  art  to  me 
No  bird,  but  an  invisible  thing, 
A  voice,  a  mystery  ; 


NOTES.  3*3 

"  And  I  can  listen  to  thee  yet 
Can  lie  upon  the  plain 
And  listen,  till  I  do  beget 
That  golden  time  again." 

— Ibid-,  p.  204. 

97:3. — Keats's  .  .  .  Autumn.  See  the  well-known  ode, 
beginning  : 

"  Season  of  mists  and  mellow  fruitfulness  !  " 

97  :  4. — Obermann's  .  .  .  birch-tree.  See  Selections, 
p.  103,  and  for  Senancour,  see  27  :  6. 

97  :  4. — Easter-daisy.  The  last  paragraphs  of  Senan- 
cour's  Obermann  describe  very  tenderly  and  imaginatively 
the  violet  and  the  Easter-daisy, — la  hdtive  pdquerette. 

97  :  15. — Four  of  them.  This  classification  of  Arnold's 
is  characteristically  based  on  no  principle.  See  the  Intro- 
duction, p.  xlix. 

98  :  5. — As  when  the  moon.  From  Pope's  Iliad,  bk. 
viii.  11.  687  ff. 

98  :  9. — Manus  heroum.  See  Propertius's  Elegies,  xx. 
11.  21-22. 

"  Hie  manus  heroum,  placidis  ut  constitit  oris, 
Mollia  composita  litora  fronde  tegit." 

'  Here  the  band  of  heroes,  when  they  had  set  foot  on  the  peaceful 
shores,  covered  the  pleasant  beach  with  well-woven  leaves  and 
branches.' 

98  :  11. — The  line  of  Theocritus.  See  Theocritus'  Idyls, 
13  :  34 :  '  For  a  great  mead  lay  before  them,  rich  with 
rushes  for  beds.'  The  reading  at  present  accepted  gives 
e/cetro,  ju^ya  for  e/c«ro  /u^yas  ;  in  this  case,  of  course,  niya 
modifies  6veiap. 

98  :  19. —  What  little  town.  See  Keats's  Ode  on  a 
Grecian  Urn. 

99  :  19. —  White  hawthorn.  This  quotation  and  the  fol- 
lowing one  are  from  Keats's  Ode  to  a  Nightingale. 

100  :  4. — Muscosi  fontes.     Vergil's  Eclogues,  vii.  45. 
100  :  6. — Pallentes  violas.    Ibid.,  ii.  47-48  :  '  For  thee  the 

fair  Naiad  plucks  pale  violets  and  the  tallest  poppies  and 


314  NOTES. 

daintily  interweaves  with  them  the  narcissus  and  the 
flower  of  the  fragrant  dill.' 

ioo  :  9. — Cana  legam.  Ibid.,  11.  51-52  :  '  I  myself  will 
pluck  quinces,  white  with  tender  down,  and  chest- 
nuts.' 

100  :  13. — I  know  a  bank.  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream, 
II.  1. 

100  :  19. — Look  how  the  floor.  The  Merchant  of  Venice, 
V.  i. 

100  :  26. — Met  we  on  hill.  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
II.  1. 

101  :  2. —  The  moon  shines  bright.  The  Merchant  of 
Venice,  I.  1. 

I03  :  3- — Daffodils.     See  97  :  2. 
I03  '  7- —  Voice   .    .    .   heard.     See  97  :  3. 
103  :  12. — Moving  waters.     See   Keats's  Last   Sonnet. 
Arnold  misquotes;  for  "  cold"  read  "pure." 

103  :  15. — Mountain  birch-tree.  Cf.  27  :  6  and  97  :  4 
The  quotation  may  be  found  in  Senancour's  Obermann, 
ed.  Paris,  1863,  p.  72. 

104  :  1. — Literature  and  Science.  This  is  one  of  the 
three  lectures  that  Arnold  gave  repeatedly  during  his  visit 
to  America  in  1883-84.  It  was  "  originally  given  as  the 
Rede  Lecture  at  Cambridge  [England],  was  recast  for  de- 
livery in  America,  and  is  reprinted  here  as  so  recast." 
See  the  preface  to  Discourses  in  America.  The  lecture  is 
a  temperate  but  comprehensive  and  vigorous  plea  for  the 
humanities  in  education  ;  to  many  believers  in  "  the 
classics  "  its  arguments  seem  still  unanswered.  The  student 
should  note  particularly  its  easy  conversational  tone,  and 
its  method  of  "  winding  into  a  subject,"  its  concreteness  and 
close  adherence  to  life,  its  pleasant  use  of  illustrations,  its 
delicately  venomous  irony,  its  mocking  repetition  of  catch- 
words and  quotations,  and  its  fine  sanity  and  sublimated 
worldly  wisdom  ;  in  all  these  respects  it  is  a  thoroughly 
characteristic  piece  of  Arnold's  prose  at  its  best.  Arnold 
himself  rated  his  Discourses  in  America  very  high  ;  he 
declared  it  to  be  "  the  book  by  which,  of  all  his  prose- 


.VOTES.  3l5 

I  i       be   re  red 

Letter:         ---.-    a   be 

£  Literal 
■ 

tution      in   1878.   now  th 

A  ,    11    aris    a  be  a 

a«.:  2  rary 

Is.     The  st  >  '   :e 

less  pli  .     .  - 

108  :  19. — To  kruno  tr.  Sec  : :-: 

-  -'--        5-37 

108  :  22. — In  a  See  T    B     B 

It  her  £'.'.-  die  ad- 

red  October  i 
no  :  2. — M.  Renan  tai  See,  for  e 

on  L'l     -        ■  -  •  ,  . 

/a?«.r   Content /  [868,  pj     ._-.      and  100-101. 

J:'    226  :  4 

118  :  5. — Di  ...  onceexpla  Seethe 

stt's  The  I      L  451,  etc 

119  :  4. — F 

ma:  ±  t        late  of  Am  $83,  he 

har.  mpleted  se  years*  ser  :  in 

Johns  Hop-:  as  Un         - 

119  :  2;  — Mr.  Dot  See  E  ar- 

■  Part  EL  chaj    xxi. 

121  :  10. — Mr.  Da 
Dar  win  .    foments  :~  -  -     : 

the  higher  :  tastes       5  to  be  i  -  : 

Let:         London,  1887,  i  100-101. 

121  :  26. — Sa  :n.      The   sect  sites  01 

-  .  Lem^r.:  .      ..-.-  1   :::    S.    :__ir  :_:;     it 

sts,  andnnmbers  at  :  200c  members  Am  ng  those 
of  its  pra;  dees      r  docti  :  go  sc  grn- 

ish -  is  are     ts      - .      El  ss  of 

peace  of  the  primitive        ristians  and      -  effi- 

cacy of  casting  lots  for  dr.         g      lance 

129:5. — La  Roger.-- m  has  left  in  his 


31 6  NOTES. 

Scholemaster  a  delightful  account  of  an  interview  with 
this  charming  girl-pedant:  "  Before  I  went  into  Germanie, 
I  came  to  Brodegate  in  Leicestershire,  to  take  my  leave  of 
that  noble  Ladie  Jane  Grey,  to  whom  I  was  exceding 
moch  beholdinge.  Hir  parentes.  the  Duke  and  Duches, 
with  all  the  houshold,  Gentlemen  and  Gentlewomen, 
were  huntinge  in  the  Parke:  I  founde  her,  in  her  Chamber, 
readinge  Phaedon  Platonis  in  Greeke,  and  that  with  as 
moch  delite,  as  som  jentlemen  wold  read  a  merie  tale  in 
Bocase.  After  salutation,  and  dewtie  done,  with  some  other 
taulke,  I  asked  hir,  whie  she  wold  leese  soch  pastime  in  the 
Parke  ?  smiling  she  answered  me:  I  wisse,  all  their  sporte 
in  the  Parke  is  but  a  shadoe  to  that  pleasure,  that  I  find  in 
Plato :  Alas  good  folke,  they  never  felt,  what  trewe  pleas- 
ure ment."  Ascham's  Scholemaster,  Arber's  ed.,  46-47. 
132  :  24. — Mr.   Wright.     See  40  :  17. 

134  :  2. — The  young  lions.  According  to  Arnold,  the 
Daily  Telegraph  (the  London  morning  journal  circulating 
most  widely  among  the  English  middle  classes),  fostered 
many  of  the  worst  tendencies  in  the  British  public; 
their  love  of  cheap,  patriotic  bluster;  their  fondness  for 
tinsel  and  claptrap  in  literary  style  ;  in  short,  all  the  lit- 
erary and  moral  vulgarities  of  Philistinism.  Leo  Adoles- 
cens  or  Young  Leo  is  Arnold's  favorite  nickname  for  the 
typical  newswriter  of  the  Daily  Telegraph.  Leo  figures 
frequently  in  Friendship 's  Garland ;  one  of  his  letters  is 
given  in  the  Selections,  pp.  250-255.  Cf.  Selections,  p.  145 
and  p.  166. 

135  :  19- — Benthamism.  The  doctrine  in  its  ethical  sig- 
nificance is  popularly  expounded  in  John  Stuart  Mill's 
essay  on  Utilitarianism,  in  his  Dissertations  and  Dis- 
cussions, vol.  iii.  Bentham  limits  all  knowledge  to 
phenomena,  denies  free-will,  and  makes  virtue  coin- 
cident with  action  for  the  greatest  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number.  Benthamism  is  used  here  by  Arnold  as 
a  general  synonym  for  materialism,  and  stands  for  any 
system  of  belief  that  opposes  itself  directly  to  a  religious 
or  transcendental  conception  of  the  universe. 


NOTES.  3X7 

136  :  15. — liny  a  pas  d'homme  necessaire.  In  Fenelon's 
Telemaque,  bk.  xiii.,  an  account  is  given  of  the  process  by 
which  an  intriguing  man  of  affairs  may  render  himself 
necessary  to  his  prince.  It  may  have  been  partly  with 
reference  to  this  classical  passage  that  Chateaubriand  said  : 
"Je  ne  me  crois  pas  un  homme  necessaire,  et  je  pense 
qu'il  n'y  a  pas  plus  d'hommes  necessaires  aujourd'hui." 
The  exact  phrase  in  the  text  is  usually  ascribed  to  Napo- 
leon. 

x37  :  3- — Exeter  Hall.  The  favorite  place  in  London 
for  large  sectarian  meetings. 

137:4. — Marylebone  Vestry.  "The  poor  law,  and 
management  of  the  paving,  cleansing,  and  lighting  are 
still  in  the  hands  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  parishes,  or 
unions  of  parishes,  or  districts  of  them,  and  their  repre- 
sentatives. The  most  important  of  these  assemblies  are 
the  vestries  of  Marylebone  and  St.  Pancras."  Bonn's  Ztf«- 
don,  1854,  p.  99.  The  Church  of  Marylebone  is  in  a  popu- 
lous district  in  the  northwest  of  London  ;  a  well-to-do 
tradesman  might  naturally  belong  to  the  vestry  and  be 
vaingloriously  busy  with  the  details  of  local  administra- 
tion.    Cf.  Selections,  p.  171,  1.  8. 

137  :  6. — His  great  dissected  master.  Jeremy  Bentham 
(d.  1832)  left  his  body  to  be  dissected  in  the  interests  of 
science  ;  his  skeleton  is  preserved  in  the  museum  of  Uni- 
versity College,  London. 

J37  :  I(3- — Our  young  barbarians.  A  humorous  adapta- 
tion of  a  line  from  Byron's  description  of  the  Dying 
Gladiator  in  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  canto  iv. 
stanza  cxli. 

137:27. —  Tubingen.  F.  C.  Baur,  who  was  made  Pro- 
fessor of  Theology  in  Tubingen  in  1826,  is  regarded  as  the 
founder  of  the  so-called  '•  Tubingen  school."  The  work  of 
the  school  was  the  scientific  interpretation  of  the  Gospels 
and  Epistles  with  the  view  of  determining  the  various  con- 
flicting conceptions  of  Jesus'  character  and  mission  that 
they  embody  and  of  fixing  the  historical  relations  of  these 
conceptions.     Baur  laid  special  stress  on  the  conflict  be- 


318  NOTES. 

tween  Petrinism  and  Paulism.  In  Arnold's  mind,  Tubin- 
gen stands  for  all  that  is  characteristically  scientific  in  the 
treatment  of  theological  and  religious  questions.  In  God 
and  the  Bible  (1875)  Arnold  has  much  to  say  of  Baur  and 
the  Tubingen  school,  e.  g.,  on  pp.  19S  and  232. 

J38  :  5. — Goethe  .  .  .  on  the  death  of  Schiller.  See  Goe- 
the's Epilog  zn  Schillers  Glocke  in  Goethe's  Werke  (ed. 
Stuttgart,  1867),  xv.  360  : 

"  Indessen  schritt  sein  Geist  gewaltig  fort 
InsEwige  des  Wahren,  Guten,  Schonen, 
Und  hinter  ihm,  in  wesenlosen  Scheine, 
Lag,  was  uns  alle  bandigt,  das  Gemeine." 

'  Meanwhile  his  spirit  fared  bravely  on  into  the  realms 
where  eternally  abide  the  True,  the  Good,  the  Beautiful; 
and  behind  him, — a  mere  shadowy  illusion, — lay  that 
which  holds  us  all  in  bondage, — the  petty  world  of 
custom.' 

139  :  1. — Philistinism.  In  German  student  slang  a  Phil- 
ister  is  anyone  outside  of  the  student  class  and  hostile  to 
it — particularly  perhaps  a  man  to  whom  money  is  owed,  a 
proprietor  of  rooms,  or  a  smug  tradesman.  More  broadly, 
the  term  is  applied  to  foes  of  the  children  of  light,  to  ene- 
mies of  ideas  and  art,  to  those  who  are  slaves  to  the  petty 
routine  of  "  use  and  wont,"  to  men  who  have  no  interest 
beyond  the  "main  chance."  An  early  instance  of  the 
word  in  this  sense  occurs  in  Goethe's  Satyros  (1773),  in  the 
opening  monologue  of  Einsiedler.  The  crude  Philistine  is 
described  as  looking  on  the  sprouting  buds  and  plants  of 
the  new  year,  and  thinking  simply  and  solely  of  the  crops 
that  they  promise  to  him  and  his  kin.  Heine  has  probably 
done  more  than  any  other  German  writer  to  make  the 
word  Philistine  known  outside  of  Germany.  An  instance 
of  his  use  of  it  may  be  found  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Reisebilder,  ii.,  Italien  (182S-29).  In  England  Carlyle  uses 
the  word  as  eai-ly  as  1S27  in  his  essay  on  the  State  of  Ger- 
man Literature  ;  Essays,  London,  1872,  i.  5S.  He  explains 
the  term  as  the  nickname  bestowed  on  the  partisans  of  the 


AZOTES.  319 

Auflarung  or  Rationalistic  movement  during  the  latter 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  by  those  who  refused  to 
find  in  Rationalism  and  Utilitarianism  the  complete  phi- 
losophy of  life.  Again,  in  1831,  Carlyle  uses  the  term,  in 
his  review  of  William  Taylor's  Historic  Survey  of  German 
Poetry.  After  describing  Taylor's  character  Carlyle  adds-. 
"  To  a  German  we  might  have  compressed  all  this  long 
description  into  a  single  word.  Mr.  Taylor  is  what  they 
call  a  Philister;  every  fiber  of  him  is  Philistine.  With  us 
such  men  usually  take  into  politics  and  become  Code- 
makers  and  Utilitarians."  Carlyle's  Essays,  ed.  London, 
1372,  iii.  241.  Thackeray's  Student  Quarter,  dealing  with 
Paris  in  1839-40,  speaks  of  the  Philister  and  the  German 
Bursch,  as  contrasted  types.  In  an  essay  on  Macaulay, 
whom,  it  may  be  noted,  Arnold  once  called  "  the  great 
Apostle  of  the  Philistines"  (Arnold's  Essays  in  Criticism, 
i.  304),  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  comments  as  follows  on  the 
term  Philistine:  It  is  a  "  word  which  I  understand  prop- 
erly to  denote  indifference  to  the  higher  intellectual  inter- 
ests. The  word  may  also  be  defined,  however,  as  the 
name  applied  by  prigs  to  the  rest  of  their  species.  .  . 
There  is  much  that  is  good  in  your  Philistine."  Leslie 
Stephen's  Hours  in  a  Library,  iii.  306.  For  Arnold's 
account  of  the  "good  "  in  Philistinism,  see  Selections,  pp. 

233-234- 

I39  •  3- — Soli.  A  place  on  the  northeast  shore  of  the 
Mediterranean,  just  north  from  Cyprus.  The  bad  Greek 
spoken  there  was  proverbial  and  originated  the  name 
solecism  for  any  incorrectness  of  speech. 

139  :  16. — Respectability.  In  the  report  of  a  trial  in  some 
English  court  a  witness  characterized  the  defendant  as 
a  respectable  man.  When  asked  what  he  meant  by 
respectable,  he  explained  that  the  man  in  question  "  kept 
a  gig."  Carlyle  seized  upon  this  naive  definition  and  wove 
from  it  the  numerous  phrases  about  "  gigmanity,  "  "re- 
spectability with  its  thousand  gigs,"  and  so  on,  that  abound 
in  his  writings. 

140  :  15. — "  The  French,  .  .  .  are    the  chosen  people. y 


320  NOTES. 

Txiese  are  the  closing  words  of  Heine's  Englische  Frag- 
mente.    See  Heine's  Werke,  ed.  Stuttgart,  vi.  252. 

140  :  27. — "  I  might  settle  in  England.'''  Two  of  Heine's 
most  amusing  attacks  on  the  English  character  are  the 
chapter  called  Jofm  Bull  in  the  Englische  Fragmente, 
and  chap.  xlix.  of  Lutetia,  Heine's  Werke,  ed.  Stuttgart, 
xii.  36  ff. 

141  :  5. —  The  rule  of  thumb.  See  Heine's  Englische 
Fragmente,  chap.  xiii.  Die  Befreiung,  and  cf.  John 
Morley's  On  Compromise . 

142  :  8. — Cobbett.  See  25  :  18.  The  passage  that  Ar- 
nold translates  is  taken  from  chap.  ix.  of  the  Englische 
Fragmente. 

143  :  16. — "  Moving  altogether.'-  This  is  an  adaptation 
of  the  last  line  of  stanza  xi.  of  Wordsworth's  Resolution 
and  Independence. 

144. — Culture  and  Anarchy.  The  preface  to  Culture 
and  Anarchy  and  the  first  chapter,  Sweetness  and  Light, 
are  made  up,  with  few  alterations,  from  the  last  lecture 
that  Arnold  gave  as  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford.  This 
lecture  was  published  under  the  title  Culture  and  its 
Enemies  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine  for  July,  1867,  xvi.  36. 
To  make  thelecture  available  for  Culture  and  Anarchy, 
Arnold  converted  the  first  few  paragraphs  into  a  preface, 
broke  the  text  in  general  into  shorter  paragraphs,  made 
a  few  verbal  changes,  and  did  away,  at  the  beginning 
and  the  close,  with  allusions  to  the  Oxford  audience. 
Except  in  these  unimportant  ways  the  Cornhill  article 
was  unaltered.  Culture  and  Anarchy  was  published  in 
1869. 

144  :  16. — Mr.  Frederic  Harrison.  The  article  in  ques- 
tion, Culture:  A  Dialogue,  appeared  originally  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review  for  November,  1867,  viii.  603.  The 
tone  and  tenor  of  the  article  are  indicated  by  the  quota- 
tion frcm  Shakespeare  that  stands  as  its  motto  : 

"The  sovereign'st  thing  on  earth 
Was  parmaceti  for  an  inward  bruise." 


NOTES.  321 

These  are  the  words  of  advice  the  fop  in  Henry  IV. 
gives  to  Hotspur  after  the  battle.  The  implication  is  that 
Arnold,  with  his  debonair  prescription  of  Culture  for  the 
terrible  evils  of  modern  society,  is  no  better  than  a  fop  in 
the  midst  of  the  carnage  and  horrors  of  war.  Cf.  174  :  16, 
and  Selections,  p.  177. 

145  :  20. —  77/i?  Daily  Telegraph.     See  134  :  2. 

147. — Sweetness  and  Light.  This  Selection,  pp.  147-180, 
is  the  first  chapter  of  Culture  and  Anarchy,  and  directly 
follows  the  Introduction,  given  in  the  preceding  Selection. 
For  the  title  see  160  :  6. 

147  :  26. — M.  Sainte-Beuve.  See  the  Quarterly  Review 
for  January,  1866,  cxix.  80.  The  article  sketches  Sainte- 
Beuve's  life  and  summarizes  his  more  important  writings; 
it  gives  no  adequate  analysis  of  his  method  or  style. 

148  :  4.— Curiosity.  Cf.  Se lections,  p.  15,  where  in  The 
Function  of  Criticism  (1865)  Arnold  makes  a  similar  plea 
for  the  value  of  Curiosity. 

148  :  23. — Montesquieu  says.  The  quotation  comes  from 
Montesquieu's  Discours  sur  les  motifs  qui  doivent  nous 
encourager  aux  sciences,  prononce  le  15  Novembre  1725. 
Montesquieu's  CEuvres  completes;  ed.   Laboulaye,  vii.  78. 

149  :  21.— Bishop  Wilson.  Thomas  Wilson  (1663-1755) 
was  Bishop  of  the  Isle  of  Man— Lord  Bishop  of  Sodor  and 
Man — from  1697  to  his  death.  For  the  details  of  his  biog- 
raphy, see  the  folio  edition  of  his  Works,  London,  1782. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  1785  copies  of  this  folio  edi- 
tion were  presented  by  Dr.  Wilson,  Prebendary  of  West- 
minster, son  of  the  Bishop,  to  "the  United  States  in 
Congress  assembled,"  and  by  the  Secretary  of  Congress, 
through  the  "  Delegates,"  transmitted  to  various  Colleges 
and  Universities.  Arnold  has  prefixed  to  Culture  and 
Anarchy  a  brief  appreciation  of  Bishop  Wilson's  religious 
writings.  "In  the  essay  which  follows,"  Arnold  says, 
"  the  reader  will  often  find  Bishop  Wilson  quoted.  To 
me  and  to  the  members  of  the  Society  for  Promoting  Chris- 
tian Knowledge,  his  name  and  writings  are  still,  no  doubt, 
familiar.     But  the  world  is  fast  going  away  from  old-fash- 


322  NOTES. 

ioned  people  of  his  sort,  and  I  learnt  with  consternation 
lately,  from  a  brilliant  and  distinguished  votary  of  the  nat- 
ural sciences,  that  he  had  never  so  much  as  heard  of 
Bishop  Wilson,  and  that  he  imagined  me  to  have  invented 
him."  .  .  "On  a  lower  range  than  the  Imitation,  and 
awakening  in  our  nature  chords  less  poetical  and  delicate, 
the  Maxims  of  Bishop  Wilson  are,  as  a  religious  work,  far 
more  solid.  To  the  most  sincere  ardor  and  unction. 
Bishop  Wilson  unites  in  these  Maxims,  that  downright 
honesty  and  plain  good  sense  which  our  English  race  has 
so  powerfully  applied  to  the  divine  impossibilities  of  reli- 
gion; by  which  it  has  brought  religion  so  much  into  practi- 
cal life,  and  has  done  its  allotted  part  in  promoting  upon 
earth  the  Kingdom  of  God." 

A  perhaps  over-ingenious  speculation  suggests  itself  as 
regards  Arnold's  use  of  Bishop  Wilson's  name.  In  1858 
died  Daniel  Wilson,  Bishop  of  Calcutta,  who  was  for  many 
years  a  curate  or  rector  in  London,  and  who  was  widely 
known  among  Low  Churchmen  by  somewhat  voluminous 
writings.  Arnold's  calm  and  complete  ignoring  of  any 
Bishop  Wilson  save  the  historical  Bishop  of  Sodor  and 
Man  may  have  been  an  intentional  bit  of  satire  at  the 
expense  of  the  Low  Church  party  and  one  of  its  typical 
representatives. 

149:21. —  To  make  reason.  Cf.  Bishop  Wilson's  Max- 
ims, in  his  Works,  ed.  17S2,  i.  290 :  "A  prudent  Christian 
will  resolve  at  all  times  to  sacrifice  his  inclinations  to 
reason,  and  his  reason  to  the  Will  and  Word  of  God." 

152  :  26. — Making  end/ess  additions.  Cf.  Celtic  Liter- 
ature, p.  137:  "The  hard  unintelligence,  which  is  just 
now  our  bane,  cannot  be  conquered  by  storm  ;  it  must  be 
suppled  and  reduced  by  culture,  by  a  growth  in  the  vari- 
ety, fullness,  and  sweetness  of  our  spiritual  life  ;  and  this 
end  can  only  be  reached  by  studying  things  that  are 
outside  of  ourselves,  and  by  studying  them  disinter- 
estedly." 

153  :  18.  —  To  promote.  The  Thirty-fourth  of  Bishop 
Wilson's  Sermons — that  on  the  Great  Duty  of  Instruct- 


A"OTES.  323 

z'ng  the  Ig?iorant — urges  "  that  the  promoting  the  King- 
dom of  God  is  very  consistent  with  the  ordinary  business 
of  life."  Bishop  Wilson's  Works,  ii.  221.  This  sermon  is 
specially  interesting  because  it  emphasizes  from  the  Chris- 
tian point  of  view  the  need  and  value  of  very  much  that 
kind  of  quiet  instruction  of  the  people  to  which  Arnold  so 
largely  devoted  himself.  "  Amongst  other  means  [for 
promoting  the  Kingdom  of  God]  that  of  instructing  the 
ignorant  is  the  foundation  of  all  the  rest.  .  .  For  thus 
men  are  dealt  with  as  reasonable  creatures.  .  .  To  be 
dealt  with  as  reasonable  creatures,  we  must  be  informed, — 
What  our  condition  is  ;— in  what  relation  we  stand  to 
God  ;  what  it  is  he  expects  from  us,"  etc. 

155  :  24.— J/r.  Roebuck's.     Cf.  20  :  24. 

159  :  14-—"  Eat  and  drink"  This  is  the  first  of  Frank- 
lin's Rules  of  Health,  as  given  in  Poor  Richard's  Alma- 
nack, 1742.  Arnold  misquotes  ;  Franklin  writes,  "  such  an 
exact  quantity  as  the  constitution  of  thy  body  allows  of." 

159  :  22. — "  //  is  a  sign,"  etc.  This  sentence  forma 
chapter  xli.  of  the  Enchiridion  of  Epictetus. 

160  :  6. — Sweetness  and  light.  This  is  the  phrase  by 
which  ^Esop,  in  Swift's  Battle  of  the  Books,  sums  up  the 
superiority  of  the  ancients  over  the  moderns.  "  As  for  us, 
the  ancients,  we  are  content,  with  the  bee,  to  pretend  to 
nothing  of  our  own  beyond  our  wings  and  our  voice,  that  is 
to  say,  our  flights  and  our  language  ;  for  the  rest,  whatever 
we  have  got  has  been  by  infinite  labor  and  search,  and 
ranging  through  every  corner  of  nature  ;  the  difference  is, 
that  instead  of  dirt  and  poison  we  have  rather  chose  to  fill 
our  hives  with  honey  and  wax,  thus  furnishing  mankind 
with  the  two  noblest  of  things,  which  are  sweetness  and 
light."     Swift's  Works,  ed.  Scott,  1824,  x.  240. 

163  :  1. — Independents.  In  America  Independents  are 
known  as  Congregationalists, — Orthodox  or  Unitarian. 
The  sect  originated  in  England  about  1570.  Its  distin- 
guishing principle  is  the  right  of  every  congregation  of 
believers  to  independence  and  self-government. 

l(>Z  :  5-—"  The  Dissidence  of  Dissent.  '     From  Burke's 


324  NOTES. 

speech  on  Conciliation  with  America.  See  Burke's  Works, 
ed.  London,  1823,  iii.  53. 

164  :  24. —  The  Pilgrim  Fat  tiers'  Voyage.  The  Pilgrim 
Fathers  landed  from  the  Mayflower  at  what  is  now  Plym- 
outh in  November,  1620.  There  were  one  hundred  and 
one  in  the  company,  all  Independents. 

166  :  18. — Publice  egestas.  See  Sallust's  Catiline,  lii.  : 
•'•  Pro  his  nos  habemus  luxuriam  atque  avaritiam  ;  publice 
egestatem,  privatim  opulentiam."  '  In  place  of  all  this 
former  excellence  we  have  to-day  luxury  and  avarice  ; 
public  want  and  private  wealth.' 

166  :  25. — The  Daily  Telegraph.     See  134  :  2. 

169  :  9. — Mr.  Beales.  Edmond  Beales  was  a  prominent 
member  of  Parliament  and  a  very  active  champion  of  the 
cause  of  democracy.  He  was  President  of  the  league  for 
securing  Manhood  Suffrage  and  made  himself  conspicuous 
in  the  summer  of  1866  by  helping  to  organize  huge  popular 
demonstrations  in  Trafalgar  Square  and  Hyde  Park,  in 
furtherance  of  the  cause  of  Reform.     Cf.  Selections,  p.  201, 

1.  15. 

169  :  9. — Charles  Bradlaugh.  At  this  time  Mr.  Brad- 
laugh  had  not  entered  Parliament  ;  he  was  chiefly  known 
as  editor  of  the  National  Reformer,  as  a  radical  lecturer  on 
religion,  and  as  an  almost  rabid  advocate  by  pen  and  voice 
of  extreme  democratic  opinions.  His  famous  and  ulti- 
mately successful  struggle  for  the  right  to  take  his  seat  in 
Parliament  without  the  customary  formal  oath  began  much 
later. 

170  :  4. — Dr.  Newman's  Apology.  Cardinal  Newman's 
Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua  (1864)  was  ostensibly  a  reply  to 
Charles  Kingsley's  charge  that  Newman  taught  the  justi- 
fiableness  of  lying,  but  was  really  an  account  of  Newman's 
whole  life  as  teacher,  preacher,  and  ecclesiastic,  and  an 
explanation  of  the  causes  that  led  him  from  Evangelical- 
ism through  the  Via  Media  to  Romanism.  Newman's 
hostility  to  "  Liberalism  "  is  specially  described  on  pp.  30, 
214,  and  261  of  the  Apologia,  ed.  1890.  Cf.  Selections 
and  Notes,  265  :  9. 


NOTES.  325 

170  :  10. — Qucr  regio.  See  the  sEneid,  i.  460.  ^neas 
finds  scenes  from  the  war  about  Troy  carved  upon  Dido's 
temple  and  exclaims  to  Achates:  "What  region  of  the 
earth  is  not  filled  with  the  tale  of  our  woe  ? " 

170  :  27. — Mr.  Lowe.  Robert  Lowe,  afterward  Viscount 
Sherbrooke,  had  held  several  offices  in  the  Board  of  Edu- 
cation and  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  had  been  conspicuous 
during  1866-67  as  one  of  the  bitterest  opponents  of  Dis- 
raeli's Reform  Bill.  His  speeches  on  this  subject  were 
published  in  1867. 

171  :  8. — Middle-class  vestries.     Cf.  137  '.4. 

173  :  9. — Mr.  Roebuck.     Cf.  20  :  24. 

174  :  \\.—Jacobi)iism.  The  term,  of  course,  comes  from 
the  name  of  the  famous  political  club,  Les  Jacobins,  to 
which  Robespierre  belonged  in  17S9-94.  The  essential 
characteristics  of  Jacobinism  as  a  habit  of  mind  are  given 
by  Arnold  in  the  lines  that  follow. 

174  :  16. — Mr.  Frederic  Harrison.  A  prominent  Lon- 
don barrister  and  man  of  letters,  one  of  the  most  active  of 
the  English  Positivists  or  followers  of  Comte.  Cf.  144:16, 
and  Selections,  pp.  177,  247-248,  and  251. 

174  :  17. — Comte.  Auguste  Comte  (1798  -1857),  the  French 
philosopher  whose  system  goes  by  the  name  of  Positivism. 
He  taught  that  all  our  knowledge  is  confined  to  phenom- 
ena, that  all  metaphysical  speculation  is  misleading,  that 
the  aim  of  science  is  by  observation,  experiment,  and 
generalization,  to  reduce  to  order  all  the  facts  of  human 
experience  and  to  find  for  them  formulas  of  ever  in- 
creasing scope.  Speculation,  he  taught,  goes  through 
three  stages  :  first,  the  theological,  where  existence  and 
its  facts  are  explained  as  directly  dependent  on  the 
capricious  action  of  supernatural  agents  ;  secondly,  the 
metaphysical,  where  existence  and  its  facts  are  explained 
as  the  expressions  of  unknown  substances  acting  according 
to  law  ;  thirdly,  the  positive,  where  the  verifiable  facts  of 
existence  are  alone  attended  to  and  the  attempt  is  made  to 
find  the  sequences  by  which  these  facts  follow  one  another. 
Positivism  was  the  most  considerable  attempt,  prior  to  the 


326  NOTES. 

Theory  of  Evolution,  to  limit  all  knowledge  to  such  knowl* 
edge  as  is  derivable  through  the  methods  of  the  natural 
sciences  and  to  reduce  this  knowledge  into  a  complete  and 
harmonious  system  of  carefully  determined  facts  and  cor- 
related principles.  Comte  substituted  for  supernatural 
religion  the  Religion  of  Humanity  and  for  the  worship  of 
God  the  cult  of  great  men.  Positivism  has  been  flippantly 
described  as  the  system  that  spells  God  with  a  small g  and 
humanity  with  a  large  h. 

174  :  17. — Mr.  Congreve.  Richard  Congreve,  b.  18 18, 
was  for  a  time  a  tutor  at  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  has 
published  various  essays  on  historical  and  social  questions, 
and  has  translated  Comte's  Catechism  of  Positive  Religion 
(1858).  Mr.  Congreve  is  more  given  to  ecclesiasticism 
than  is  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  and  whereas  Mr.  Harrison 
has  little  to  say  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity  and  is  chiefly 
concerned  for  the  intellectual  and  moral  welfare  of  Posi- 
tivists,  Mr.  Congreve  lays  great  stress  on  the  value  of 
Religion,  and  holds  weekly  meetings  in  London  where 
Positivistic  worship  is  conducted  with  a  good  deal  of 
ornate  detail.  For  an  account  of  Positivist  churches  in 
London,  see  the  New  York  Na lion,  vol.  1.  No.  1285,  p.  128. 

174  :  28.—^  current  in  people 's  minds.  Here  and  in  the 
next  paragraph  Arnold  recognizes  in  a  curiously  incidental 
fashion  the  theory  that  regards  opinion  as  depending  nec- 
essarily upon  social  conditions,  and  as  subject  to  law  in 
its  apparently  whimsical  changes.  There  is  something  a 
trifle  grotesque  in  his  arrogating  to  himself  and  to  "  Cul- 
ture "  special  ownership  in  this  conception  of  the  growth 
of  opinion — a  conception  which  is  distinctively  scientific 
and  tends  to  reduce  even  the  flurries  of  popular  whim  to 
law,  and  to  systematize  even  the  caprices  of  fashion. 

175  :  8. — Preller.  Ludwig  Preller  (1809-61)  was  from 
1846  to  1861  Librarian-in-chief  at  Weimar  ;  he  had  pre- 
viously  been  a  Professor  in  several  German  universities,  in- 
cluding Jena.  His  most  important  works  were  his  Greek 
Mythology  (1854-55)  and  his  Roman  Mythology  (1858). 

175  :  31. — A  new  version  of  the  Book  of  fob.     Arnold 


NOTES.  3  2  7 

misrepresents  Franklin.  The  "  project "  for  a  new  version 
of  Job  was  merely  a  somewhat  elaborate  joke.  Among  the 
"  Bagatelles,"  now  included  in  the  second  volume  of  Frank- 
lin's Works,  is  a  piece  called  The  Levee,  in  which  Frank- 
lin translates  the  account  in  Job  of  Satan's  visit  to  God  into 
the  language  of  the  ceremonial  of  a  European  court  ;  the 
translation  is  obviously  meant  to  be  amusing.  Immediately 
after  this  piece  comes  the  so-called  "  project  "  for  a  new  ver- 
sion of  the  Book  of  Job,  with  a  half-dozen  specimen  verses. 
In  one  of  these  verses  the  phrasing  is  the  same  with  that 
of  The  Levee,  and  in  all  of  them  the  account  of  the  Bible 
incidents  is  so  managed  as  to  be  absurdly  suggestive  of 
modern  politics  and  intrigue.  Take  for  example,  Frank- 
lin's paraphrase  of  verse  ii.  ;  the  original  is  as  follows  : 
"  But  put  forth  thine  hand  now,  and  touch  all  that  he 
hath,  and  he  will  curse  thee  to  thy  face."  With  Franklin 
this  becomes,  "  Try  him;— only  withdraw  your  favor,  turn 
him  out  of  his  places,  and  withhold  his  pensions,  and  you 
will  soon  find  him  in  the  opposition."  Arnold  criticises 
Franklin's  bit  of  burlesque  with  astonishing  seriousness 
and  literalness.  For  The  Levee  and  the  Proposed  New 
Version,  see  Franklin's  Works,  ed.  Boston,  1S36,  ii.  164. 

176  :  ib.— Deontology.  Bentham's  Deontology,  or  The 
Science  of  Morality  (the  theory  of  what  is  fitting,— of  the 
ought,— Grk.  to  Seov,  that  which  is  binding  or  right),  was 
published  in  1S34,  two  years  after  Bentham's  death.  For 
the  passage  Arnold  quotes,  see  i.  39.     Cf.  135  :  19- 

176  :  30. — Comte.     Cf.  174  :  17. 

176  :  30  —Mr.  Buckle.  He  is  remembered  through  his 
heroic  attempt,  in  his  History  of  Civilization  in  England 
(vol.  i.,  1857  ;ii.,  1S61),  to  put  history  on  a  scientific  basis  and 
to  trace  the  laws  that  have  determined  the  development  ot 
national  life.  He  was  without  university  training,  studied 
for  the  most  part  alone,  and  was  doubtless  in  some  degree 
victimized  by  his  theories.  His  History  of  Civilisation  is 
full  of  brilliant  suggestion,  and  shows  enormous  reading, 
but  is  not  always  sure  in  its  facts,  and  is  often  unsafe  in  its 
speculation.     His  maim  thesis,  that  progress  depends  wholly 


328  NOTES. 

on  intellectual  enlightenment,  does  not  tally  with  the  later 
sociological  theories  of  evolutionists.  Buckle  wrote  before 
the  days  of  evolution.  His  History  has  been  recently  de- 
fended at  great  length  by  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  in  Buckle 
and  his  Critics  :  A  Study  in  Sociology,  London,  1895. 

176  :  30— Mr.  Mill.  John  Stuart  Mill  (1806-73),  the 
most  prominent  perpetuator  in  the  middle  of  the  century  of 
the  Locke  and  Hume  tradition  in  philosophy,  before  it  was 
transformed  by  the  assimilation  of  the  results  of  modern 
science.  He  was  the  immediate  disciple  of  his  father 
James  Mill  and  of  Jeremy  Bentham.  The  history  of  his 
intellectual  life  from  his  earliest  years  is  given  in  his 
Autobiography,  a  book  which  should  be  read  at  the 
same  time  with  Mark  Pattison's  Memoirs  and  Cardinal 
Newman's  Apologia.  His  System  of  Logic  appeared  in 
1843  and  his  Political  Economy  in  1848.  His  three  most 
characteristic  short  works  are,  On  Liberty  (1859),  Utilitari- 
anism (1862),  and  the  Subjection  of  Women  (1869). 

179  :  28. — Abelard.  Pierre  Abailard  (1079-1142)  was  one 
of  the  most  brilliant  thinkers  and  famous  teachers  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  During  the  first  years  of  the  twelfth  century 
he  lectured  in  Paris  to  crowds  of  students  from  all  over 
Europe.  Later,  after  many  mischances  largely  due  to 
his  romantic  passion  for  Helo'ise,  the  story  of  which 
has  entered  so  variously  into  European  literature,  he 
turned  hermit  and  took  up  his  abode  in  the  wilderness. 
But  he  was  soon  besieged  once  more  with  pupils,  who 
lived  in  huts  in  the  desert  to  be  near  him  and  listen  to 
his  teaching.  Some  years  later  Abelard  was  accused  of 
heresy  by  Bernard,  through  whose  influence  he  was  con- 
demned by  a  church  Council  about  1140.  See  Abailard : 
sa  vie  sa  philosophic  et  sa  theologie,  by  Charles  Remusat, 
Paris,  1845. 

179  :  31. — Lessing.  G.  E.  Lessing  (1729-81)  was  the 
re-creator  of  German  literature.  He  assailed  the  slavish 
imitation  of  French  pseudo-classicism,  prevalent  in 
the  writings  of  such  men  as  Gottsched,  and  turned  to 
English   literature   for   his   models.     In  his  Laocoon  and 


\ 


NOTES.  329 

Dramaturgie  he  interpreted  Classical  art  anew  and  freed 
it  from  the  false  glosses  of  French  pseudo-classical  criti- 
cism. As  a  dramatist  he  dealt  frankly  and  powerfully 
with  actual  life,  and  did  much  to  make  German  literature 
the  imaginative  and  sincere  expression  of  German  national 
ideals.  In  Nathan  der  Weise,  he  pleaded  for  religious 
tolerance.  Everywhere  he  stood  for  clear  thought,  genu- 
ine emotion,  national  enthusiasm  against  pedantry,  artifici- 
ality, and  academicism.  During  his  later  years  he  was 
head  Librarian  at  Wolfenbiittel,  near  Brunswick. 

179  :  32. — Herder  (1744-1803).  Probably  Herder's  great- 
est claim  to  remembrance  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  first 
grasped  firmly  and  applied  widely  the  conception  of  litera- 
ture that  explains  it  as  a  growth  and  development  depend- 
ent upon  social  conditions.  He  was  also  one  of  the  earliest 
of  the  Germans  to  feel  the  artistic  charm  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  it  was  through  him  that  Goethe  was  led  to  an  ap- 
preciation of  Medieevalism.  His  mind  was  astonishingly 
active  and  fertile,  but  his  artistic  sense  was  not  sure,  and 
he  produced  little  work  that  lives  through  sheer  beauty. 
His  beneficial  influence  on  his  contemporaries  cannot  be 
measured  by  the  actual  survival  of  his  writings  During 
the  latter  part  of  his  life  he  was  court-preacher  at 
Weimar. 

180  :  12. — St.  Augustine.  See  the  Confessions  of  St. 
Augustine,  bk.  xiii.  ch.  xviii.  ;  J.  G.  Pilkington's  transla- 
tion, Edinburgh,  18S6,  p.  369. 

181. — Hebraism  and  Hellenism.  The  terms  are  probably 
taken  from  Heine.  See  Heine's  Uber  Ludwig  Borne, 
bk.  i.  Werke,  ed.  Stuttgart,  x.  12  :  "  'Jew  '  and  '  Chris- 
tian '  are  for  me  words  of  quite  similar  meaning  and 
are  both  opposed  to  Hellene,  by  which  name  also  I  denote 
no  special  nation,  but  a  mental  habit  and  a  mode  of  con- 
ceiving life,  which  are  both  innate  and  the  result  of  train- 
ing. In  this  connection  I  might  say  :  All  men  are  either 
Jews  or  Hellenes,  men  ascetic  in  their  instincts,  hostile  to 
culture,  spiritual  fanatics,  or  men  of  vigorous  good  cheer, 
full  of  the  piide  of  life,  Naturalists.     Thus  there  have  been 


33°  NOTES. 

Hellenes  in  the  families  of  German  pastors,  and  there  have 
been  Jews  who  were  born  in  Athens  and  perhaps  the 
direct  descendants  of  Theseus.  The  beard  makes  not  the 
Jew,  nor  the  peruke  the  Christian."  It  should  be  noted 
that  somewhat  later  in  this  Selection  (p.  i S3),  Arnold  speaks 
of  Heine's  recognition  of  the  contrast  between  Hellene  and 
Hebraist  and  asserts  that  Heine  brings  in  Hebraism  "  just 
as  a  foil  and  contrast  to  Hellenism,  and  to  make  the  superi- 
ority of  Hellenism  more  manifest." 

In  Wordsworth's  Preface  to  the  18 15  edition  of  his 
Poems  there  is  an  interesting  contrast  between  the  Hebrew 
mind  and  imagination  and  those  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans. 
Milton  is  "  a  Hebrew  in  soul."  See  Wordsworth's  Works, 
ed.  Morley,  882-8S3.  The  comparison  is,  however,  brief, 
and  hardly  goes  beyond  artistic  matters. 

181  :  1. —  This  fundamental  ground.  These  are  the 
opening  words  of  chap.  iv.  of  Cult  tire  and  Anarchy.  In 
chap.  iii.  Arnold  has  described  the  various  defective  types 
of  which  English  society  consists, — Barbarians,  Philistines, 
the  Populace, — and  has  exemplified  the  evils  that  arise  from 
the  self-will  with  which  each  type  lives  out  its  own  life  irre- 
sponsibly. The  tendency  of  all  English  life  and  thought, 
Arnold  insists,  is  to  overemphasize  the  right  of  the  individ- 
ual to  go  his  own  way  ;  confusion  and  a  kind  of  anarchy 
result.  "We  see,  then,"  Arnold  concludes,  "how  indis- 
pensable to  that  human  perfection  which  we  seek  is,  in  the 
opinion  of  good  judges,  some  public  recognition  and  estab- 
lishment of  our  best  self,  or  right  reason.  We  see  how  our 
habits  and  practice  oppose  themselves  to  such  a  recogni- 
tion, and  the  many  inconveniences  which  we  therefore 
suffer.  But  now  let  us  try  to  go  a  little  deeper,  and  to  find 
beneath  our  actual  habits  and  practice  the  very  ground 
and  cause  out  of  which  they  spring."  Now  follows  the 
.Selection  in  the  text. 

181  :  6. — The  best  light  you  have.  "  Two  things  a  Chris- 
tian will  do  :  Never  go  against  the  best  light  he  has  ;  this 
will  prove  his  sincerity  : — and  secondly,  to  take  care  that 
his  light  be  not  darkness  ;  that  is,  that  he  mistake  not  his 


NOTES.  33 1 

rule  by  which  he  ought  to  go."  Bishop  Wilson's  Maxims, 
Works,  ed.  1782,  i.  290. 

183  :  6. — Frederick  Robertson  (1816-53).  Robertson  of 
Brighton — he  went  to  Brighton  in  1S47 — was  one  of  the 
most  eloquent  preachers  of  his  day.  He  belonged  to  no 
special  party  in  the  Church  of  England,  at  times  ran  coun- 
ter to  the  prejudices  of  all  parties,  was  fearless  in  his  advo- 
cacy of  his  own  ideas,  was  embroiled  with  various  social 
cliques  in  Brighton  because  of  his  contention  for  reforms, 
and  wore  out  his  nervous,  eager  temperament  in  his  strug- 
gle to  maintain  his  ideals.  See  Rev.  Stopford  Brooke's 
Life  and  Letters  of  Frederick  Robertson  (1865).  The 
sermon  Arnold  alludes  to  is  doubtless  the  Advent  Lecture 
of  December  6,  1S49,  The  Grecian.  "  Four  characteris- 
tics," Robertson  urges,  "  marked  Grecian  life  and  Grecian 
religion:  Restlessness — Worldliness — The  Worship  of  the 
Beautiful — The  Worship  of  the  Human."  See  Robertson's 
Sermons,  ed  Boston,  1869,  i.  195. 

183  :  n. — Heinrich  Heine.  See  181.  For  an  interesting 
discussion  of  Heine's  Paganism,  see  Emile  Hennequin's 
E.crivains  francises,  Paris,  1SS9,  p.  82. 

186  :  S. — Aristotle  will  undervalue  knowing.  See  the 
Nicomachean  Ethics,  bk.  ii.  chap.  iii. 

186  :  15. — Epictetus  exhorts  us.  See,  for  example,  the 
chapter  "  Concerning  those  who  Embrace  Philosophy  in 
Words,"  The  Discourses  of  Epictetus,  bk.  ii.  chap.  xix. : 
"Show  me  a  Stoic,  if  you  have  one.  Where?  Orhowshould 
you?  You  can  show,  indeed,  a  thousand  who  repeat  the 
Stoic  reasonings.  .  .  Show  me  one  who  is  sick,  and 
happy  ;  in  danger,  and  happy  ;  dying,  and  happy  ;  exiled, 
and  happy  ;  disgraced,  and  happy.  .  .  Why  then  do  you 
not  finish  your  work,  if  you  have  the  proper  aims?"  The 
Works  of  Epictetus,  translated  by  T.  W.  Higginson, 
160-161,  (revised  ed.  I.,  187-8). 

186  :  19. — Plato  .  .  .  calls  life.  Seethe  Gorgias,  where 
Socrates  discusses  with  Callicles  the  need  of  self-control. 
Callicles  insists  that  the  truly  happy  life  consists  in  allow- 
ing one's  desires   "to  wax  to  the   uttermost"  and  then 


332  NOTES. 

ministering  to  them.  Socrates  contends  for  the  life  of 
absolutely  controlled  desires.  Callicles  finds  such  a  life 
absurd  ;  the  life  of  "  those  who  want  nothing  "  cannot  be 
the  ideal  happy  life,  "for  then  stones  and  the  dead 
would  be  the  happiest  of  all."  "  Yes,"  replies  Socrates, 
"  and  your  words  may  remind  us  that  life  is  a  fearful 
thing  ;  and  I  think  that  Euripides  was  probably  right  in 
saying  '  Who  knows  if  life  be  not  death  and  death  life  ? ' 
for  I  think  that  we  are  very  likely  dead."  Socrates  then 
goes  on  to  preach  the  doctrine  of  the  mortification  of  de- 
sires.    See  Jowett's  Dialogues  of  Plato,  i.  81-82. 

186:20. —  The  Imitation.  The  famous  mediaeval  devo- 
tional manual  usually  ascribed  to  Thomas  a  Kempis,  a 
monk  of  the  fifteenth  century,  who  spent  his  life  in  a  con- 
vent near  Utrecht.  The  doctrine  of  asceticism  pervades 
the  whole  manual.  See  the  chapter  that  treats  "  Of  the 
Royal  Road  of  the  Holy  Cross,"  bk.  ii.  chap,  xii.:  "  Behold 
all  is  in  the  Cross,  and  in  dying  lies  all ;  and  there  is  no 
other  way  to  life  and  to  true  inward  peace  but  the  way  of 
the  holy  cross  and  of  daily  mortification."  .  .  "  Know  for 
certain  that  thou  must  lead  a  dying  life  ;  and  the  more  a 
man  dies  to  himself,  the  more  he  begins  to  live  to  God." 
The  Imitation  of  Christ,  Kegan  Paul  &  Co.,  1881  (Parch- 
ment Library),  pp.  90,  95. 

186  :  31. —  The  moral  virtues  .  .  .  the  porch.  See  the 
Nicomachean  Ethics,  bk.  x.  chap.  viii. :  "It  is  only  in  a 
secondary  sense  that  the  life  which  accords  with  other, 
i.  e.,  non-speculative,  virtue  can  be  said  to  be  happy  ;  for 
the  activities  of  such  virtue  are  human,  they  have  no 
divine  element."  Aristotle  goes  on  to  demonstrate  that 
the  activity  of  the  Gods  consists  in  speculation,  and  that 
"  the  life  of  men  is  blessed  in  so  far  as  it  possesses  a  cer- 
tain resemblance  to  their  speculative  activity."  Welldon's 
translation,  Macmillan,  1S92,  pp.  338  and  341. 

187  :  3 — Plato  expressly  denies.  "  But  he  who  is  a  phi- 
losopher or  lover  of  learning  (<j>i\o[xa8r)s),  and  is  entirely  pure 
at  departing,  is  alone  permitted  to  reach  the  gods. "  Plato's 
Phcedo,  82,  D.     See  Jowett's  Dialogues  of  Plato,  i.  411. 


NOTES.  333 

187  :  27. —  The  best  man  is  he.  The  passage  occurs  in 
Socrates's  talk  with  Hermogenes  over  his  approaching 
trial.  Socrates  justifies  his  serenity  of  mind  and  explains 
wherein  he  seems  to  himself  to  have  obtained  happiness 
through  living  well.  See  Xenophon's  Memorabilia,  bk.  iv. 
chap.  viii. 

190  :  15. — My  Saviour  banished  joy.  Arnold  seems  to 
have  in  mind  Herbert's  poem,  The  Size  : 

"Content  thee,  greedie  heart. 
Modest  and  moderate  joyes  to  those  that  have 
Title  to  more  hereafter  when  they  part 
Are  passing  brave." 

The  fifth  stanza  begins  : 

"  Thy  Saviour  sentenc'd  joy, 
And  in  the  flesh  condemned  it  as  unfit  ; 
At  least  in  lump." 

Herbert's  Works,  ed.  Grosart,  1874,  i.  157. 

191  :  1. — St.  Augustine's  Confessions.  Seethe  admirable 
translation  by  J.  G.  Pilkington,  Edinburgh,  1886. 

191  :  2. —  The  Imitation.     Cf.  186  :  20. 

194  :  15. — Mr.  Murphy.  See  the  second  chapter  of  Cul- 
ture and  Anarchy  :  "  Mr.  Murphy  lectures  at  Birmingham, 
and  showers  on  the  Catholic  population  of  that  town  '  words,' 
says  the  Home  Secretary,  '  only  fit  to  be  addressed  to 
thieves  or  murderers.'  What  then?  Mr.  Murphy  has  his 
own  reasons  of  several  kinds.  .  .  He  is  doing  as  he  likes  , 
or,  in  worthier  language,  asserting  his  personal  liberty.  .  . 
The  moment  it  is  plainly  put  before  us  that  a  man  is 
asserting  his  personal  liberty,  we  are  half  disarmed  ;  be- 
cause we  are  believers  in  freedom,  and  not  in  some  dream 
of  a  right  reason  to  which  the  assertion  of  our  reason  is  to 
be  subordinated."  Mr.  Murphy  and  his  religious  extrava- 
gance form  for  Arnold  an  illustration  of  the  kind  of  "  an- 
archy" in  English  social  conditions  that  can  be  corrected 
solely  by  "  Culture."     See  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  47. 

194  :  30. — Puritanism   .    .    .    St.  Paul.     Arnold    treats 


334  NOTES. 

this  topic  at  length  in  his  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism 
(1870). 

195  :  14. — Already  pointed  out.  See  Culture  and  Anar- 
chy, p.  121. 

197  :  19. — Life  after  our  physical  death.  Cf.  Arnold's 
Sonnet,  Immortality  : 

"  No,  no  !  the  energy  of  life  may  be 
Kept  on  after  the  grave,  but  not  begun  ; 
And  he  who  flagg'd  not  in  the  earthly  strife, 
From  strength  to  strength  advancing — only  he, 
His  soul  well-knit,  and  all  his  battles  won, 
Mounts,  and  that  hardly,  to  eternal  life." 

Arnold's  Poetical  Works,  ed.  1890,  p.  183. 

197  :  24. — One  of  the  noblest  collects.  The  Collect  for 
Easter  Even:  "Grant,  O  Lord,  that  as  we  are  baptized 
into  the  death  of  thy  blessed  Son  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ, 
so  by  continual  mortifying  our  corrupt  affections  we  may  be 
buried  with  him  ;  and  that  through  the  grave,  and  gate  of 
death,  we  may  pass  to  our  joyful  resurrection  ;  for  his 
merits,  who  died,  and  was  buried,  and  rose  again  for  us, 
thy  Son  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 

199  :  23. — Faraday.     Cf.  121  :  26. 

200  :  24. — As  Plato  says.  For  the  classic  passage  in 
which  Plato  describes  the  development  of  the  soul  through 
its  devotion  to  Beauty  see  the  Symposium,  199-212;  Jowett's 
Dialogues  of  Plato,  i.  491-503. 

201  :  13. — Mr.  Spurgeon  .  .  .  voluntaryism.  By  vol- 
untaryism is  meant  the  advocacy  of  a  Free  as  opposed  to 
a  State  Church.  Cf.  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  61  :  "Again, 
as  culture's  way  of  working  for  reason  and  the  will  of  God 
is  by  directly  trying  to  know  more  about  them,  while  the 
Dissidence  of  Dissent  is  evidently  in  itself  no  effort  of  this 
kind,  nor  is  its  Free  Church,  in  fact,  a  church  with  worthier 
conceptions  of  God  and  the  ordering  of  the  world  than  the 
State  Church  professes,  but  with  mainly  the  same  concep- 
tions of  these  as  the  State  Church  has,  only  that  every 
man  is  to  comport  himself  as  he  likes  in  professing  them — 


NOTES.  335 

this  being  so,  I  cannot  at  once  accept  the  non-conformity 
any  more  than  the  industrialism  and  the  other  great  works 
of  our  Liberal  middle  class  as  proof  positive  that  this 
class  is  in  possession  of  light,  and  that  here  is  the  true  seat 
of  authority  for  which  we  are  in  search." 

201  :  14. — Mr.  Brig/it  .  .  .  persona/  liberty.  Cf.  Cul- 
ture and  Anarchy,  p.  43  :  "  Mr.  Bright  .  .  .  said  forcibly 
in  one  of  his  great  speeches,  what  many  other  people  are 
every  day  saying  less  forcibly,  that  the  central  idea  of 
English  life  and  politics  is  the  assertion  of  personal  lib- 
erty. Evidently  this  is  so  ;  but  evidently,  also,  as  feudal- 
ism, which  with  its  ideas  and  habits  of  subordination  was 
for  many  centuries  silently  behind  the  British  Constitu- 
tion, dies  out,  and  we  are  left  with  nothing  but  our  system 
of  checks,  and  our  notion  of  its  being  the  great  right  and 
happiness  of  an  Englishman  to  do  as  far  as  possible  what 
he  likes,  we  are  in  danger  of  drifting  toward  anarchy." 
201  :  IS-— Mr.  Beales.     Cf.  169  :  9. 

206  :  17.— Henry  More  (1614-87).  He  is  commonly 
called  Henry  More  the  Platonist.  He  was  one  of  the  four 
Cambridge  men— the  others  were  Cudworth,  Smith,  and 
Whichcote— who  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury withstood  the  influence  of  the  mechanical  philosophy 
of  Descartes  and  Hobbes  through  recourse  to  Plato  and 
Idealism.  His  Divine  Dialogues  are  perhaps  his  most 
representative  work  from  the  point  of  view  of  literature. 
He  is  studied  suggestively  and  some  of  his  ideas  and 
phrases  are  reproduced  in  Mr.  Shorthouse's  John  Ingle- 
sant.  "  His  great  discovery,"  says  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson  in  a 
recent  essay,  "burst  upon  him  like  a  flash  of  light — the 
nearness  and  accessibility  of  God,  whom  he  had  been  seek- 
ing so  far  off  and  at  such  a  transcendent  height  ;  his  reali- 
zation of  the  truth  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  does  not  dwell 
in  great  sublimities,  and,  so  to  speak,  upon  the  mountain 
tops,  but  that  it  is  within  each  one  of  us."  See  A.  C.  Ben- 
son's Essays,  New  York,  1S96,  p.  65,  and  Arnold's  Last 
Essays,  p.  197. 
207  :  14. — Sublime    hoc    candens.      Cicero     quotes    the 


336  NOTES. 

phrase  from  Ennius  in  De  Natura  Deorum,  ii.  25  :  "  As- 
pice  hoc  sublime  candens  quod  invocant  omnes  Jovem." 
'  Behold  this  Brilliant  on  high  which  all  men  call  Jupiter.' 
Arnold's  text  misprints  invocenl  for  invocant,  and  Arnold 
transposes  hoc  and  sublime. 

208  :  31. — Qu'est-ce-que  la  nature?  See  Les  Pense'es 
de  Blaise  Pascal,  ed.  Molinier,  1879,  i.  69,  De  la  justice. 
Coutumes  et  prejugdes. 

210  :  12. — Rabbinism.  Rabbis  are  authenticated  Teach- 
ers of  the  Jewish  Law.  Rabbinism  is  the  religious  and 
philosophic  doctrine  developed  in  the  schools  of  the 
Rabbis. 

213  :  8. — Ovid.  "  QiAs  locus,"  etc.  '  What  place  is 
more  awful  than  a  temple?  Yet  temples  also  must  a 
woman  shun,  if  she  be  prone  to  err.' 

213  :  16. — Hominum  divomque.  Part  of  the  first  lines  of 
the  opening  invocation  of  Lucretius's  De  Rerum  Natura  : 
"  ^Eneadum  genetrix  hominum,"  etc.  'Great  mother  of 
the  Romans,  delight  of  men  and  gods,  divine  Venus.' 

214  :  3. — Air.  Birks.  Thomas  Rawdon  Birks,  author  of 
"  The  Two  Later  Visions  of  Daniel,"  "  Memoirs  of  the 
late  Rev.  E.  Bickersteth,"etc  ,  had  in  1873  just  been  made 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  at  Cambridge. 

215  :  21. —  The  moral  and  intelligent.  The  phrase  has 
been  reiterated  by  Arnold  in  Literature  and  Dogma  as 
characteristic  of  scientific  theology.  Cf.  the  Preface, 
p.  ix. :  "  Now,  the  assumption  with  which  all  the  churches 
and  sects  set  out,  that  there  is  '  a  Great  Personal  First 
Cause,  the  moral  and  intelligent  governor  of  the  universe,' 
and  that  from  him  the  Bible  derives  its  authority,  cannot 
at  present,  at  any  rate,  be  verified."  Cf.  also  Arnold's 
ridicule  of  attempts  to  describe  God's  ways  to  man  in  the 
phraseology  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  man  of  business  :  St.  Paul 
and  Protestantism,  p.  14. 

216  :  18. — Saying  of  Izaak  Walton.  See  the  last  chap- 
ter of  the  first  part  of  Walton's  Complete  Angler.  Piscator, 
who  is  on  his  way  home  from  a  good  day's  fishing,  moralizes 
for  the  benefit  of  the  Scholar:  "  And  that  our  present  happi- 


NOTES.  337 

ness  may  appear  to  be  the  greater,  and  we  the  more  thank- 
ful for  it,  I  will  beg  you  to  consider  with  me,  how  many  do, 
even  at  this  very  time,  lie  under  the  torment  of  the  stone, 
the  gout,  and  toothache  ;  and  this  we  are  free  from.  And 
every  misery  that  I  miss  is  a  new  mercy  :  and  therefore  let 
us  be  thankful."     Complete  Angler,  ed.  Major,  1844,  p.  248. 

220  :  12. —  The  prison  of  Puritanism.  See  Arnold's  essay 
on  Heinrich  Heme,  Essays,  i.  176.  The  sentence  specially 
commended  itself  to  Arnold,  and  is  quoted  also  in  the  essay 
on  Falkland,  Mixed  Essays,  p.  170. 

220  :  15.— Rabelais  (ca.  1490-1553).  The  incorrigible 
jester  of  the  early  Renaissance.  His  Gargantua  and  Pan- 
tagruel  comment  recklessly  on  the  whole  scope  of  life  as  it 
shaped  itself  in  the  imaginations  of  men  newly  emanci- 
pated from  the  asceticism  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

220  :  16. — George  Fox  (1624-90).  The  first  of  the 
Quakers. 

221  :  15. — Rights  of  Man.  In  August,  1789,  the  Constit- 
uent Assembly  in  Paris  voted  the  "  Declaration  of  the 
Rights  of  Man."  This  was  a  kind  of  Confession  of  Faith 
of  the  new  Revolutionary  religion.  The  first  two  articles 
were  as  follows  : 

I.  Men  are  born  and  remain  free  and  equal  in  rights. 

II.  These  rights  are  :  liberty,  property,  security,  and 
resistance  to  oppression.     See  Martin's  France,  i.  78. 

222  :  9. — La  Boheme.  The  world  of  those  chartered 
libertines— struggling  young  painters  and  poets.  George 
Sand  was  the  first  to  use  the  word  in  this  sense  in  her  La 
Derniere  Aldini  (1837),  which  closed  with  the  exclama- 
tion :  Vive  la  Boheme!  Henri  Murger's  famous  Scenes 
de  la  vie  de  Boheme  was  published  in  1848. 

224  :  16. — Das  Gemeine.  Cf.  Selections  and  Notes, 
138  :  9- 

225  :  17. — For  aculeness  .  .  .  the  Greeks.  These  lines 
are  quoted  in  MacFirbis's  Book  of  Genealogies,  a  curious 
Irish  work  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Arnold  omits  sev- 
eral characterizations  between  those  of  the  Saxons  and  the 
Gaedhils: 


338  NOTES. 

"  For  haughtiness,  the  Spaniards; 
For  covetousess  and  revenge,  the  French,"  etc. 

See  Eugene  O'Curry's  Lectures,  Dublin,  1861,  p.  224. 

226  :  4. — M.  Renan  (1823-92),  the  famous  French  sava*J, 
author  of  the  well-known  Vie  de  Jesus.  For  the  essay 
from  which  Arnold  quotes,  see  Renan's  Essais  de  Morale 
et  de  Critique,  Paris,  1859,  p.  375. 

227  :  22. — Always  ready  to  react.  See  Martin's  France, 
ed.  1857,  i.  36. 

229  :  20  — Architectonice.  '0  apxir^KTuv  was  "  the  mas- 
ter builder  "  whose  conception  governed  the  whole  struc- 
ture of  a  building.  'H  dpxireKToviKr)  with  rex"V,  art, 
understood,  means  the  complete  mastery  in  art  that  is 
characteristic  of  the  perfectly  accomplished  artist  and 
that  secures  the  highest  results. 

229  :  21. — Agamemnon.     One  of  iEschylus's  tragedies. 

230  :  15. — Sybaris.  A  Greek  city  in  the  south  of  Italy, 
that  in  the  sixth  century  b.  c.  developed  great  wealth 
and  luxury.  Sybarite  became  the  traditional  name  for  a 
rich  and  careless  pleasure-taker. 

250  :  17. — Baicr.  A  town  on  the  Mediterranean  not  far 
from  what  is  now  Naples,  the  site  of  the  villas  m*  many 
wealthy  Romans.     Cf.  Horace's  first  Epistle,  1.  83: 

"  Nullus  in  orbe  sinus  Baiis  praelucet  amcenis." 
'  No  bay  in  the  world  outshines  that  of  lovely  Baias. 

230  :  25. — The  knives.  This  quotation  and  an  abstract 
of  the  Battle  may  be  found  in  O'Curry's  Lectures,  p.  248. 
The  battle  occurred,  according  to  the  Annals,  in  the  year 
of  the  world  3330. 

231  :  9. — Forth  to  the  war.  Cf.  The  Forms  of  Ossian, 
ed.  iS22,  ii.  38:  "  Cormul  went  forth  to  the  strife,  the 
brother  of  car-borne  Crothar.  He  went  forth,  but  he  fell. 
The  sigh  of  his  people  rose."  Also,  ii.  24:  '•  Our  young 
heroes,  O  warriors  !  are  like  the  renown  of  our  fathers. 
They  fight  in  youth.  They  fall.  Their  names  are  in 
song."     Both  passages  are  from  Temora. 


NOTES.  339 

233  :  29. — Philistinism.     Cf.  139  :  1. 

235  :  10. — Rue  de  Rivoli.  A  famous  street  of  shops  and 
hotels  in  Paris;  it  is  taken  by  Arnold  as  symbolic  of 
French  taste,  or  rather  of  "  Latin  precision  and  clear  rea- 
son." Stonehenge,  with  its  Druidic  circle,  stands  pre- 
sumably for  Celtic  "spirituality";  just  how  Nuremberg 
corresponds  to  or  expresses  Teutonic  "  fidelity  to  nature," 
or  the  "  steady  humdrum  habit  of  the  creeping  Saxon,"  it 
is  not  so  easy  to  see. 

235  :  13. — Mr.  Tom  Taylor's  translations.  Tom  Tay- 
lor (1817-80),  an  oddly  versatile  man  of  letters,  who  pro- 
duced successful  plays,  readable  biographies,  and  confident 
art  criticism  with  the  utmost  facility.  He  was  editor  of 
Punch  from  1874  to  1880.  His  best  known  play  is  Masks 
and  Faces.  His  Bat/ads  and  Sotigs  of  Brittany  ap- 
peared in  1865.  It  is  specially  interesting  as  containing 
several  engravings  of  Millais's  and  at  least  one  each  of 
Charles  Keene's  and  John  Tenniel's. 

238  :  5. — Mr.  Cobden.  Richard  Cobden  (1804-65),  the 
famous  Liberal  politician  and  Anti-Corn  Law  agitator. 
The  passage  to  which  Arnold  objects,  commented  severely 
on  English  ignorance  of  American  geography  as  illustrated 
by  a  Times  article,  in  which  three  or  four  of  the  largest 
North  American  rivers  were  absurdly  confused  and  mal- 
treated. "  When  I  was  at  Athens,"  said  Cobden,  "  I 
sallied  out  one  summer  morning  to  see  the  far-famed 
river,  the  Ilyssus,  and  after  walking  for  some  hundred 
yards  up  what  appeared  to  be  the  bed  of  a  winter  torrent, 
I  came  up  to  a  number  of  Athenian  laundresses,  and  I 
found  they  had  dammed  up  this  far-famed  classic  river, 
and  that  they  were  using  every  drop  of  water  for  their 
linen  and  such  sanitary  purposes.  I  say,  Why  should  not 
the  young  gentlemen  who  are  taught  all  about  the  geog- 
raphy of  the  Ilyssus  know  something  about  the  geography 
of  the  Mississippi,  the  Ohio,  and  the  Missouri  ?  "  See  John 
Morley's  Cobden,  ii.  479.  Cf.  Mr.  Balfour's  Cobden  and  the 
Manchester  School  in  his  Essays  and  Addresses. 

238  :  28. — Aliens    in    speech.      Lord    Lyndhurst,   John 


34°  NOTES. 

Singleton  Copley  (1772-1863),  strenuously  disowned  the 
phrase.  He  was  charged  with  having  used  it  during  the 
debates  of  1836.  Cf.  Sir  Theodore  Martin's  Lord  Lynd- 
hurst,  p.  346. 

239  :  28. — Eugene  O'Curry  (1795-1S62).  He  held  the 
chair  of  Irish  History  in  the  Catholic  University  at  Dub- 
lin— the  university  of  which  Newman  was  for  a  time 
rector. 

240  :  10. — Lord  Melville.  Henry  Dundas,  Viscount 
Melville  (1741-1811),  was  one  of  the  most  strenuous  sup- 
porters of  Lord  North's  policy  toward  the  American 
colonies. 

241  :  4. — Mr.  Roebuck's  and  Mr.  Lowe's.  For  Mr. 
Roebuck,  see  Selections  and  Notes,  20  :  24,  and  173  :  9. 
For  Mr.  Lowe,  see  170  :  27. 

241  :  6. — Daily  Telegraph.     Cf.  134  :  2. 

241  :  21. — Fenianisni.  The  Fenians  were  a  secret 
society,  founded  about  i860,  to  obtain  by  force  indepen- 
dence for  Ireland.  They  derive  their  name  from  Fin,  a 
legendary  Irish  hero,  MacPherson's  Fingal,  father  of 
Ossian. 

242. — Compulsory  Education.  This  and  the  following 
Selection  are  Letters  vi.  and  xii.  of  Friendship's  Gar- 
land, published  in  book  form  in  1871,  with  the  motto 
Manibus  date  lilia  plenis — Bring  handfuls  of  lilies. 
Friendship's  Garland,  originally  contributed  to  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  a.?,  a  series  of  Letters,  is  far  more  searchingly 
ironical  in  its  treatment  of  English  life  than  Culture  and 
Anarchy.  Its  essential  ideas,  however,  remain  those  of 
the  earlier  book.  It  insists  on  the  need  of  culture  (which 
here  goes  by  the  German  name,  Geist)  and  on  the  ina- 
bility of  mere  political  machinery  to  remedy  existing 
evils;  it  illustrates  the  absurdities  of  outworn  mediaeval 
traditions  and  the  grotesqueness  of  sectarian  prejudices. 
Most  of  the  Letters  are  signed  by  Arnold  himself,  who 
poses  as  a  humble  candidate  for  higher  knowledge,  tempo- 
rarily under  the  engrossing  influence  of  a  young  German 
philosopher,  Arminius  von  Thunder-ten-Tronckh.    A  few  of 


NOTES.  341 

the  Letters  purport  to  be  from  Arminius,  and  one,  No. 
xii.,  from  Young  Leo,  the  typical  newswriter  of  the  Daily 
Telegraph.  By  the  use  of  Arminius's  fierce  intellectualism 
Arnold  exposes  unsparingly  many  of  the  most  ludicrous 
imperfections  in  English  life;  yet,  by  his  clever  suggestion 
of  Arminius's  Prussian  pedantries  and  pedagogic  crocheti- 
ness  of  temper,  he  makes  it  possible  for  an  English  reader  to 
take  Arminius  humorously,  feel  some  of  his  own  superi- 
ority, and  hence  accept  criticism  without  fatal  injury 
to  his  self-esteem.  Meanwhile,  Arnold  deprecates  the 
charge  of  self-sufficiency  by  means  of  much  droll  self- 
caricature. 

No  attempt  is  made  in  the  Notes  to  explain  the  continual 
allusions  in  these  Selections  to  current  events  and  to  other 
parts  of  Friendship's  Garland.  Arnold's  general  inten- 
tion and  the  quality  of  his  irony  are  plain  enough. 

258. — America.  This  was  written  before  Arnold's  visit 
to  America  in  1SS3-S4.  For  Arnold's  direct  impressions  of 
American  life, — impressions  that,  despite  some  acerbity 
and  some  desire  to  "hold  an  English  review  of  his 
Maker's  grotesques,"  are,  on  the  whole,  kindly  and  appre- 
ciative,— the  reader  should  turn  to  the  second  volume  of 
the  Letters.  Numbers,  in  Discourses  in  Afnerica,  gives  a 
formal  criticism  of  the  special  clangers  of  American  life. 

259  :  i.—M.  Renan.  Cf.  226  :  4  and  no  :  2.  For  the 
passage  quoted,  see  Renan's  Questions  Contemporai7ies, 
Preface,  vii;  cf.  p.  76  of  the  essay. 

263  :  27. — Mr.  Beecher.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  (1813-87), 
for  many  years  pastor  of  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn. 

263  :  27. — Brother  Noyes.  J.  H.  Noyes  (181 1-86), 
founder  of  the  so-called  Oneida  Community.  Hepworth 
Dixon  gave  in  1867  a  picturesque  account  of  this  com- 
munity in  New  America,  chap.  53. 

263  :  30. — Mr.  Ezra  Cornell  (1807-74),  founder  of  Cor- 
nell University,  Ithaca,  N.  Y.  According  to  its  charter 
the  university  was  established  with  the  purpose  of  teach- 
ing "such  branches  of  learning  as  are  related  to  agri- 
culture and  the  mechanic  arts,  including  military  tactics.'' 


342  NOTES. 

264  :  3. — Mr.  White.  See  Culture  and  Anarchy,  Pref- 
ace, p.  xvi :  "A  Nonconformist  minister,  the  Rev. 
Edward  White,  who  has  written  a  temperate  and  well- 
reasoned  pamphlet  against  Church  establishments,  says 
that  '  the  unendowed  and  unestablished  communities  of 
England  exert  full  as  much  moral  and  ennobling  influ- 
ence upon  the  conduct  of  statesmen  as  that  Church  which 
is  both  established  and  endowed.'  " 

265. — Emerson.  This  appreciation  of  Emerson,  one  of 
the  three  "Discourses"  that  Arnold  gave  on  his  lecture- 
tour  in  America,  illustrates  well  the  limitations  as  well  as 
the  excellences  of  his  literary  criticism.  The  lack  of  any 
strenuous  attempt  to  get  at  the  real  substance  of  Emer- 
son's teaching  and  to  correlate  it  with  the  intellectual 
tendencies  of  the  times  is  conspicuous  and  characteristic; 
the  essay  does  not  put  us  at  the  center  of  Emerson's 
thought  and  reveal  it  in  its  entirety  and  self-consistency, 
and  in  its  necessary  connection  with  the  social  conditions 
by  which  it  was  largely  determined.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  ethical  quality  of  Emerson's  work  is  delicately  per- 
ceived and  described;  the  emotional  quality  of  his  thought 
and  moods  and  style,  in  so  far  as  they  react  upon  charac- 
ter, is  appi-eciated  with  fine  sensitiveness  of  taste  and  ex- 
quisite sympathy.  Here,  as  ever,  Arnold  as  a  critic  is 
most  distinctively  an  appreciator  of  the  beauty  of  the  art 
of  those  "that  live  in  the  spirit."  Cf.  the  Introduction, 
pp.  xxxvi-xliii. 

265  :  1. — Forty  years  ago.  As  regards  Arnold's  style  in 
this  essay,  see  the  Introduction,  pp.  lxiv-lxv. 

265  :  9. — Cardinal  Newman  (1801-90).  Cf.  170  :  4.  He 
was  the  leader  of  the  Oxford  movement,  1830-41,  and  at 
the  time  of  which  Arnold  speaks  was  still  preaching  and 
writing  with  the  purpose  of  reviving  the  spiritual  life  of 
the  Anglican  Church  and  reinvesting  the  Church  with 
mediaeval  dignity  and  splendor.  He  resigned  his  position 
as  preacher  to  the  University  in  1843  and  withdrew  to 
Littlemore,  where  he  had  planned  founding  a  monastery. 
In  1S45  he  entered  the  Church  of  Rome.     In  1854  he  was 


NOTES.  343 

made  Rector  of  the  new  Catholic  University  at  Dublin. 
After  a  few  years  he  took  up  his  abode  in  the  Oratory  near 
Birmingham,  where  he  died  in  1890. 

265  :  17. — St.  Mary's  pulpit.  St.  Mary's  is  the  Cathedral 
Church  of  Oxford. 

266  :  1. — After  the  fever  of  life.  See  Newman's  Sermon 
on  Peace  in  Believing;  Parochial  and  Plain  Sermons, 
vi.  369.     The  sermon  was  preached  May  29,  1839. 

266  :  7. — Littlemore.  A  small  town  within  an  easy  walk 
of  Oxford.  In  1828,  when  Newman  was  made  incumbent 
of  St.  Mary's,  he  was  also  made  chaplain  of  Littlemore. 
He  withdrew  to  Littlemore  in  1S41,  though  he  did  not  re- 
sign from  St.  Mary's  till  TS43. 

266  :  29. — Somewhere  or  other.     See  Selections,  p.  137. 

267  :  6. — Edward  Irving  (1 792-1 S34).  He  was  famous 
as  an  eloquent  pulpit  orator,  and  afterward  as  the  founder 
of  a  new  sect,  the  so-called  Holy  Catholic  Apostolic  Church, 
which  still  exists  in  London.  His  pretensions  as  a  prophet 
became  finally  so  extreme  that  he  was  deserted  by  all  his 
followers  save  a  few  fanatics.  Cf.  Carlyle's  Reminiscences. 
Irving  was  for  a  time  engaged  to  Jane  Welch,  afterward 
Mrs.  Carlyle. 

267  :  12. — Goethe.  Arnold  here  substantially  admits  his 
discipleship  of  Goethe.     Cf.  Introduction,  p.  lxxix. 

267:14. —  IVilhelm  Meister.  Carlyle's  translation  ap- 
peared in  1824. 

267  :  23. — Dirge  over  Mignon.  See  Wilhelm  Meister, 
bk.  viii.  chap   viii. 

268  :  19. —  Weimar.     Goethe's  home. 

269  :  27. — A  German  critic.  Hermann  Grimm,  now 
Professor  in  Berlin  University.  See  Arnold's  A  French 
Critic  on  Goethe  :  "  Then  there  comes  a  scion  of  the  ex- 
cellent stock  of  the  Grimms,  a  Professor  Hermann  Grimm, 
and  lectures  on  Goethe  at  Berlin,  now  that  the  Germans 
have  conquered  the  French,  and  are  the  first  military 
power  in  the  world,  and  have  become  a  great  nation,  and 
require  a  national  poet  to  match;  and  Professor  Grimm 
says  of  Faust,  of  which  Tieck  had  spoken  so  coldly:    '  The 


344  NOTES. 

career  of  this,  the  greatest  work  of  the  greatest  poet  of  all 
times  and  of  all  peoples,  has  but  just  begun,  and  we  have 
been  making  only  the  first  attempts  at  drawing  forth  its 
contents.'  "     Mixed  Essays,  ed.  1883,  p.  208. 

271  :  23. — Milton.  See  Milton's  Of  Education  :  "  To 
which  [/.  e.  logic  and  rhetoric]  poetry  would  be  made  subse- 
quent, or  indeed  rather  precedent,  as  being  less  subtile 
and  fine,  but  more  simple,  sensuous,  and  passionate." 
Prose  Works,  London,  1806,  i.  281. 

272  :  10. — So  nigh  is  grandeur.  The  last  lines  of  the 
third  of  Emerson's  Voluntaries:  Poems,  ed.  1883,  p.  237. 

272  :  15. —  Though  love  repine.  One  of  the  Quatrains, 
Sacrifice:  Poems,  p.  314. 

272  :  23. — And  ever.     From  May-Day:  Poems,  p.  190. 

273  :  is. — Cowper.  Several  of  Cowper's  poems  moralize 
gracefully  on  the  lives  of  insects,  birds,  or  animals;  e.  g., 
the  Pineapple  and  the  Bee,  the  Raven,  the  Nightingale 
and  the  Glowworm.  Possibly  Arnold,  with  his  customary 
desire  to  eulogize  totality,  means  to  call  to  mind  the  moral 
of  the  Nightingale  and  Glowworm: 

"  Hence  jarring  sectaries  may  learn 
Their  real  interest  to  discern; 
That  brother  should  not  war  with  brother, 
And  worry  and  devour  each  other; 
But  sing  and  shine  with  sweet  consent, 
Till  life's  poor  transient  night  is  spent, 
Respecting  in  each  other's  case 
The  gifts  of  nature  and  of  grace." 

273  :  19. — Bums.  See  his  To  a  Mouse:  Poems,  Globe 
ed.,  p.  54. 

274:11.-77^  Dial.  "The  literary  achievments  of 
Transcendentalism  are  best  exhibited  in  the  Dial,  a 
quarterly  '  Magazine  for  Literature,  Philosophy,  and  Re- 
ligion,' begun  July,  1S40,  and  ending  April,  1S44.  The 
editors  were  Margaret  Fuller  and  R.  W.  Emerson.  .  . 
Mr.  Emerson's  bravest  lectures  and  noblest  poems  were 
first  printed  there.     Margaret    Fuller,  besides  numerous 


NOTES.  345 

pieces  of  miscellaneous  criticism,  contributed  the  article 
on  Goethe,  alone  enough  to  establish  her  fame  as  a  dis- 
cerner  of  spirits."  O.  B.  Frothingham's  Transcendental- 
ism, p.  132.  Among  the  other  contributors  were  George 
Ripley,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  Theodore  Parker,  Henry 
Thoreau,  theChannings,  and  C.  P.  Cranch. 

274  :  25. — Arthur  Stanley  (1815-S1).  He  is  best  re- 
membered as  Dean  of  Westminster.  In  1S44  he  published 
a  Life  of  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  Matthew  Arnold's  father. 
Cf.  28:11. 

275  :  25. — Sartor  Resartus.  The  poor  publisher  was  not 
so  wrong-headed  as  he  is  made  to  appear;  he  was  simply 
not  a  prophet.  Sartor,  as  a  serial  in  Fraser's  Magazine 
in  1833-34,  had  led  to  many  violent  protests  on  the  part 
of  subscribers,  and,  when  published  as  a  book  in  1838,  had 
called  forth  but  two  letters  of  commendation, — one  from 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and  one  from  a  Roman  Catholic 
priest  in  Ireland.  Under  the  circumstances,  the  publisher 
can  hardly  be  blamed  for  having  hesitated  about  "  a  new 
edition." 

275  :  29. — Regent  Street.  A  street  of  fashionable  shops 
in  London,  not  far  from  Club-land. 

275  :  30. — Crockford.  The  house  on  St.  James's  Street 
that  is  now  used  by  the  Devonshire  Club,  Avas  formerly  a 
famous  gambling  house  kept  by  one  Crockford. 

276  :  2.— John  Sterling  (1806-44).  He  is  now  for  the 
most  part  remembered  as  Coleridge's  disciple  and  Carlyle's 
friend.  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling  appeared  in  1851  ;  the 
closing  paragraph  suggests  vividly  Sterling's  peculiar 
charm  :  "  Here,  visible  to  myself,  for  some  while,  was  a 
brilliant  human  presence,  distinguishable,  honorable,  and 
lovable  amid  the  dim  common  populations  ;  among  the 
million  little  beautiful,  once  more  a  beautiful  human  soul  ; 
whom  I,  among  others,  recognized  and  lovingly  walked 
with,  while  the  years  and  the  hours  were." 

276  :  15. — Leigh  Hunt  (1784-1859).  Libeler  of  the 
Prince  Regent ;  author  of  Rimini;  inveterate  man  of  let- 
ters ;  friend  of  Keats  and  Shelley  and  Carlyle  ;  cherishei 


346  NOTES. 

of  the  unpractical ;  the  first  thorough-going  English  anti- 
Philistine. 

276  :  17. — Old  Rogers  (1763-18 5  5).  The  banker-poet, 
patron  of  art  and  letters,  and  epigrammatic  diner-out.  His 
Pleasures  of  Memory  appeared  in  1792. 

279  :  7-  —  English  Traits.  Emerson's  account  of  his 
visit  to  England  (1856).  Hawthorne's  Our  Old  Home 
appeared  in  1863. 

281  :  2i. — Senancour  (1770-1S46).  Cf.  27  :  6,  97  :  4,  and 
103  :  15. 

282  :  3. — Marcus  Aurelius  (121-180).  The  great  Impe- 
rial moralist  of  Rome.  See  the  Thoughts  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  translated  by  George  Long  (1S62).  See  also 
Arnold's  Essays,  i.  344,  and  Walter  Pater's  Marius  the 
Epicurean. 

285  :  10.  —  Disposed  .  .  .  to  trust  himself.  The 
dangers  of  arbitrariness  and  of  self-will  are,  of  course,  the 
burden  of  Arnold's  whole  discourse  in  Culture  and  Anar- 
chy. Cf.  Selections,  p.  181  ff. ,  and  especially  Doing  as  one 
Likes,  chap.  ii.  of  Culture  and  Anarchy. 

286  :  n. — The  hour  when  he  appeared.  Emerson's 
work  was  part  of  the  "Liberal  movement"  in  English 
literature.  He  strove  to  free  the  individual  from  the  bond- 
age of  old  traditions  and  to  give  him  the  courage  of  new 
feelings  and  aspirations.  Only  through  over-emphasis  on 
the  rights  of  the  individual  was  the  richer  emotional  and 
spiritual  development  of  the  later  century  possible.  For 
this  reason  Arnold  approves  Emerson's  incitement  to 
"self-will." 

287  :  19. — Brook  Farm.  The  Brook  Farm  "association 
was  simply  an  attempt  to  return  to  first  principles,  to 
plant  the  seeds  of  a  new  social  order,  founded  on  respect 
for  the  dignity,  and  sympathy  with  the  aspirations  of 
man.  .  .  It  was  felt  at  this  time,  1842,  that,  in  order  to 
live  a  religious  and  moral  life  in  sincerity,  it  was  necessary 
to  leave  the  world  of  institutions,  and  to  reconstruct  the 
social  order  from  new  beginnings.  A  farm  was  bought  in 
close  vicinity  to  Boston  (at  West  Roxbury)  ;  agriculture 


NOTES.  347 

was  made  the  basis  of  the  life,  as  bringing  man  into  direct 
and  simple  relations  with  nature,  and  restoring  labor  to 
honest  conditions.  To  a  certain  extent,  .  .  .  the  princi- 
ple of  community  in  property  was  recognized."  O.  B. 
Frothingham's  Transcendentalism,  p.  164.  The  experi- 
ment lasted  from  1842  to  the  burning  of  the  Phalanstery  or 
large  common  dwelling,  in  1S47.  Among  the  members  of 
the  community  were  George  Ripley,  Charles  A.  Dana, 
Minot  Pratt,  and  for  a  time  Hawthorne.  Cf.  Haw- 
thorne's notes  of  his  experiences  at  Brook  Farm  in  Froth- 
ingham's Transcendentalism,  p.  171. 

287  :  20. — Dissidence  of  dissent.     Cf.  163  :  5. 

290  :  11. —  What  if  thou  ivert  born.  See  Sartor  Resar- 
tus,  bk.  ii.  ch.  ix.  :  "I  asked  myself  :  What  is  this  that, 
ever  since  earliest  years,  thou  hast  been  fretting  and  fum- 
ing, and  lamenting  and  self-tormenting,  on  account  of  ? 
Say  it  in  a  word  :  is  it  not  because  thou  art  not  happy  ? 
Because  the  thou  (sweet  gentleman)  is  not  sufficiently 
honored,  nourished,  soft-bedded,  and  lovingly  cared-for  ? 
Foolish  soul  !  What  Act  of  Legislature  was  there  that  thou 
shouldst  be  Happy  ?  A  little  while  ago  thou  hadst  no  right 
to  be  at  all.  What  if  thou  wert  born,"  etc.  Arnold's  con- 
trast between  Carlyle  on  the  one  hand,  and  Augustine  and 
Epictetus  on  the  other,  is  open  to  misconception.  Carlyle 
expressly  admits  in  a  passage  directly  following  that  quoted 
in  the  text,  that  "  Blessedness "  is  the  highest  good  of 
human  life, — a  Blessedness  won  through  self-denial  and 
"  Love  of  God  ";  it  would  not  be  easy  logically  to  distin- 
guish this  Blessedness  from  the  delight  or  happiness  which 
Epictetus  and  Augustine  admit  as  legitimate  ends  of 
human  action.  The  pursuit  of  happiness  in  any  Epicurean 
sense,  all  three  moralists  condemn.  Still,  the  force  of 
Arnold's  contrast  remains  unimpaired  in  so  far  as  Carlyle 
more  than  the  other  two  moralists  fails  to  portray  the 
actual  pleasures  or  the  golden  self-possession  of  assured 
spiritual  life. 

290  :  13. — Act  we  must.  Cf.  St.  Augustine's  account  of 
the  Roman  Goddess  Felicity  in  the  City  of  God,  bk.  iv. 


348  NO  TES. 

chap.  23  :  "  For  who  wishes  anything  for  any  other  reason 
than  that  he  may  become  happy  ?  .  .  .  No  one  is  found 
who  is  willing  to  be  unhappy.  .  .  For  there  is  not  any- 
one who  would  resist  Felicity,  except,  which  is  impossible, 
one  who  might  wish  to  be  unhappy." 

290  :  15. — Epictetus.  Cf.  the  Discourses  of  Epictetus 
(Higginson's  translation),  bk.  iii.  chap.  vii.  :  "  For  it  is 
impossible  that  good  should  lie  in  one  thing,  and  rational 
enjoyment  in  another."  The  underlying  purpose  of  the 
Discourses  is  adequately  to  define  "  rational  enjoyment  " 
and  to  distinguish  between  the  rational  and  the  irrational. 
"  The  only  way  to  real  prosperity  (let  this  rule  be  at 
hand  morning,  noon,  and  night)  is  a  resignation  of  things 
uncontrollable  by  will.  .  .  Mindful  of  this,  enjoy  the 
present  and  accept  all  things  in  their  season."  Bk.  iv. 
chap.  iv. 

293  : 4. —  The  paramount  duty.  Cf.  bk.  iv.  of  the  Excur- 
sion, where  the  Wanderer  expounds  to  the  Solitary  the 
dependence  of  life  on  Hope. 

"We  live  by  Admiration.  Hope,  and  Love  ; 
And,  even  as  these  are  well  and  wisely  fixed, 
In  dignity  of  being  we  ascend." 


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About  one  hundred  selections  (most  of  them  com- 
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authors  represented  is  thoroughly  comprehensive  and  the 
selections  themselves  are  chosen  with  excellent  taste.  I 
am  specially  pleased  that  Mr.  Pancoast  has  given  complete 
essays,  rather  than  mere  fragments. 

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HENRY    HOLT    AND    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 


Pancoast's  Introduction  to 
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Enlarged,     ix  +  656  pp.     121110.     $1.35. 

This  edition  has  been  entirely  rewritten  and 
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book for  High  School  work  in  English  Literature  than  this 
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Pancoast's  Introduction  to 
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The  Nation: — Quite  the  best  brief  manual  of  the  subject 
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HENRY    HOLT    AND    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 


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